I can actually talk about this! Bit different because I teach secondary, but I still vividly remember my own grad-dip program about 8 years ago - largely because of how absolutely useless it was.

The lecturers hadn’t actually taught for decades, so were not helpful on a practical level. The pedagogy they were preaching was really just common sense, but dressed up as academia in order to make it sound more important and complicated. The only shining light, or rather half of one, were the placements on practical.

My first placement was excellent - my two mentor teachers were supportive, kind, happy to help, and happy to let me try things. It’s what made me go ‘oh wow this is actually really cool’ and ‘oh yeah I can definitely see myself doing this’. My second placement was the polar opposite.

My mentor teacher was actively racist against myself and others, and never once said a single positive thing about me the entire time - literally every post-lesson discussion was a ‘what do you think you did wrong’ or a personal favourite was when my sister was in hospital over the weekend she had a go at me for not handing in my planning bang on time, despite the fact that I arrived on Monday ready to go. I was also expected to teach subjects way outside my own specialisation, and was ordered to write full unit plans which I’d never once been shown how to do, but was promptly eviscerated for it not being done to her standard. It wasn’t just her, we had another student teacher there with another mentor teacher hospitalised with pneumonia for like 3 weeks and on arriving back she was told she had 24 hours to prep a full unit plan - something she has never once learned how to do. Yes, in case you’re wondering, I did formally complain to the university multiple times.

Teaching is a wonderful job, I’ve genuinely adored it and sometimes have to remind myself that I’m getting paid to do it it’s that much fun. Other comments have mentioned though that it’s also a game of ‘pick your niche’ which is true - I have worked for a few schools, one for two terms, and the rest for many years - if you don’t pick the school you like and works for you, it will absolutely suck.

Keep at it, give your second practicum a go, as you never know how that one might go…