Teaching Practice / Work Experience

Carlow Educate Together welcomes teachers and students every year for Teaching Practice, Work Experience and Transition Year Experience. We work with all Teacher Training Colleges and also with the second level schools and the two colleges in Carlow Town. We have a limited amount of space and we have found that we are finding it difficult to accommodate everyone that applies to the school for experience. Work experiences have to be a mutually positive experience for both student and the school so we have devised this page to help you decide whether our school is the right fit for you before you apply.

Teaching Practice

Carlow Educate Together is the only Educate Together school in Co. Carlow. Many students have decided that it is a good “box to tick” to do one teaching placement in an Educate Together school, to increase chances of employment in the future. However, we also know that there are a number of students who for various reasons may only be able to work in an Educate Together school, and we would like to prioritise students in this category. If you are applying to do Teaching Practice in our school, you will need to outline why you want to work in our particular school. If you are equally to happy to work in an Educate Together school as you would in a denominational school, you might be best to leave a place for one of your colleagues who doesn’t have this option. We can only accommodate a small number of students and it is best to note that we tend not to take students for a full 10 week placement unless it is absolutely exceptional circumstances. We also prefer that colleges would organise placements where possible. All placements will require the student to be fully garda vetted.

Work Experience (Carlow IT and St. Patrick’s College, Carlow)

We are always happy to offer work experience to student in the above colleges. We can accommodate 1 student per annum in our integrated classes for children with autism. We can also offer a further place in our mainstream classes depending on the makeup of pupils in the school. In your placement, you will be expected to take part in the whole of the school experience. If you are interested in becoming an SNA in the future, this is the right placement for you. If you are not offered a placement in the Integrated Class, please ensure with your college that it is ok to work in the mainstream setting. We cannot change your placement once you have been accepted. This has not been an issue in the past. Before you begin, you will need to be garda vetted. Please leave yourself enough time for this to be processed as you will not be able to start until this has cleared.

Transition Year Work Experience

We love having TY students who are interested in becoming primary school teachers in the future! We work on a first-come, first-served basis when accepting students. We do not prioritise past-pupils so please do not be offended if we are unable to offer a placement. TY experience is generally one day per week so we offer up to 5 placements at any one time, one for each day of the week. We only offer placements to students that directly approach the school, and while we understand it can be nerve-wrecking to do this, we have an easy form to fill out below. It really doesn’t look good if the first point of contact is a parent! (We mean that in the best possible way) Once you’re accepted, you may need to go through garda vetting if you are over 16. This is probably where your parent(s) will come in. Make sure to leave enough time to get this processed. Apart from that, you’re likely to be working with our Junior/Senior Infant classes and helping out in lots of different areas. We’d like to give you a flavour of what it’s like to work in a primary school and we hope that giving you lots of classroom experience will help.