This was easily the toughest year of my life, but also the most rewarding...

My journey into teaching starts a couple of years before I started my PGCE. While doing a PhD at UEA, I got the chance to do some teaching on undergrad courses. I enjoyed this, and for the first time in my life began thinking about teaching as a career.

I dipped my toe in the school-teaching waters by taking part in the Student Associates Scheme, which got me a 2-week placement in a local high school. Fully expecting the experience to put me off the whole idea, I was shocked to find that I actually enjoyed it. And fourteen months later I was starting a PGCE in secondary Maths.

In July before starting the PGCE course, I attended a subject knowledge enhancement course to boost my maths knowledge, some of which I hadn't seen since leaving school ten years previously. I would thoroughly recommend this. Apart from revising the subject matter, we got introduced to many teaching techniques, as well as getting to know some of our future fellow trainees, and the teachers who led the course. All in all, I felt I had a head start when the PGCE course began in September.

Things kicked off in September with a week of observation in school, which we had to organise ourselves. I used a contact from the booster course to get myself into a local school. I loved my time there, and this would bear fruit later on.

On the first day at UEA, the new maths trainees all met for the first time. I still remember my first reaction on walking into the room - being what a motley bunch we were. Far from the geeky appearance of stereotypical mathematicians, I found myself thrown in with a bunch of fun, lively students. We were destined to have many a good laugh during the time we spent together.

It wasn't all fun and games though. I found my first placement particularly stressful, to the point where one morning I couldn't face it any more. Spending all my evenings and weekends preparing lessons for kids I couldn't control had got too much for me. I rang in sick and had decided to discontinue the course. I wasn't cut out to be a teacher. Thankfully my wife, UEA tutor, and school mentor thought otherwise, and persuaded me to give it another go. And I haven't looked back since. In fact, less than a week after this low point, I had secured a job at the school I'd been at in September. What a turnaround!

After this dramatic week things ran much more smoothly. After surviving first placement, I grew in confidence on second placement, becoming much more comfortable in the classroom as well as managing the workload at home. The course culminated with a fun week away in Wales in the spring half term with all the other maths trainees. It was great to be able to relax together safe in the knowledge that we had all survived and secured jobs for September.

In summary, this was easily the toughest year of my life, but also the most rewarding. At one point it seemed that planning lessons was all I ever did. Perhaps what saved me was accepting that not every lesson is going to be perfect. For me, surviving my PGCE year was about finding my own limits, and realising that I wasn't going to be 'Superteacher' straightaway. Once I'd accepted this, I began to enjoy life again. Do I regret my decision to become a teacher? Not for a second. In what other job would you be given a card, ‘Hand made by Shaun', which says "By Sir, weel miss you".