What time is it? PLACEMENT TIME?!

[fireheart]

Whew, I found out a LOT yesterday. Here's a short summary of what I'll be doing this week and then doing after the holidays:

-This week I'll get a chance to see two different class plays, one each for Classes Five and Seven. Then I'll be helping with our own play, which is an adaption of The Hobbit. (and the teacher is reading that to the class)

-I also get a chance to see and participate in as many specialist classes as possible, which gives me a chance to bond with the students and also meet the staff members I haven't met yet.

After the school holidays

-Because of the nature of the Main Lesson topic after the holidays, my mentor teacher feels uncomfortable with me taking said topic, so we've agreed to co-share it in some aspects (the topic is on sound, light/vision and heat). She will be letting me take the rest of the Main Lesson on Ancient Rome after that though.

-The students do what are known as "Practice Lessons" each week in Literacy and Numeracy, so after the holidays, I will be slowly taking over that role. At first I will be taking 1 literacy, 1 numeracy and then working up to 2-3 practice lessons a week.

-I also get the opportunity to do a class excursion (HOPEFULLY) during next term, which ties back to the topic for the Main Lesson.

-From around the second week onwards, I will also be leading the verses for each day. The kids do three verses: 2-4 morning verses (one is one they do all year, the others they do according to the seasons), a verse before they eat (sort of like grace, but more acknowledging basic ingredients) and a verse at the end of the day.

-And finally, I get to do a craft activity with the kids on Friday afternoon, which I will either be running ONLY over the four weeks or I'll be starting and then handing over to Jodie at the end of the four weeks. I am thinking of having the kids do mosaics, albeit small ones. (Since they are studying Ancient Rome as their main English and history topic)

[fireheart]

And I blew it. BIG TIME.

So yesterday we had two class plays (long story short, each class puts a play on for the other classes). For the second play, I was "left" by myself in a sense. (I say that because the teacher I was meant to be with was actually involved in the play and nobody gave me an idea on who I need to defer "to") And a few of the students thought it would be hilarious to disrespect me by wearing hats or hoods and then backchatting.

I totally lost my cool, yelled at them repeatedly. The Class Five teacher had to set them straight. And then afterwards, I yelled at them AGAIN when they were with the Japanese teacher. Uh-oh. (The Japanese teacher set them straight)

In the car on the way home, I felt awful and I cried.

Needless to say, today I was pulled aside and told how to do things correctly should that ever happen again. On top of that, I also received a phone call from the supervisor who is due to assess me in a few weeks. We discussed the situation AGAIN (very awkward) and we then explained it and what had happened. She then assured me that someone ELSE had done the same thing last year with the SAME class and that Class Six (my year level) is one of the trickiest classes to manage. (bear in mind that the students stay with the same teacher, so the student teacher last year had my students as Class Five, not Class Six). Also that my teacher was somewhat strict.

I'm not angry or upset at being told off. I'm just taking it in my stride and learning from it. As a result though, due to that incident, I realised that I need some more time to have a breather and that spending ALL of the NIT lessons with the kids this week is not helping me build relationships. So as a result, even though it will be expected come Term 3, I am spending tomorrow's NIT lessons with my mentor teacher or in the library (with the exception of Bothmer since I have not seen it and I am curious to learn more). If it's alright with the school principal, I may even spend some time with the learning support staff learning from them as well. (NIT=Non Instruction Time, basically specialist lessons the kids receive. Because of the nature of the school, the kids have more NIT lessons than most children, with them having NIT in Bothmer, PE, Art, Music, Recorder, Technology, Gardening and Library)

The school is definitely helping me think about resources though and trying to incorporate an environment where EVERYTHING is done for a particular reason, not just to look good. (for instance, the class studies Ancient Rome because the children at that age are becoming more familiar with a high degree of order and form) There is this puzzle in the library that I absolutely love though:



the idea is that with that particular puzzle, the children are encouraged to be more creative and think for themselves by forming individual patterns. There is an infinite selection of ideas. For me, I am also seeing practice of motor skills and the formation of patterns.

Only time will tell.

[fireheart]

Today was the last day of term and was interesting in some aspects. Here's a few things I found out over the last 2 days:

-Bothmer is more about developing their bodily rhythms and co-ordination and is not as spiritual as opposed to eurhythmy. The school DID have a eurhythmy teacher, but he/she left and on top of that, the students were getting bored with it by around Class 8-9. So the decision was made to re-introduce it in the lower year levels.

-I got given the OK to maximise my placement in terms of visiting other classes, spending time with the learning support staff and whatnot provided that I am not disturbing the children and I negotiate first.

[42_42_42]

I don't think anyone who is in the teaching profession has never had a moment (or two or six...) where they've lost their cool and yelled, especially when you're still learning and figuring all this stuff out. The people teaching you how to teach know that. It's all just part of your learning process, really. My first year in eduction, I taught 7th grade language arts and I was a provisional licensee, which meant I had NO training in teaching. I was thrown in in the 3rd week of school to sink or swim. I yelled. A LOT that year. I also decided that middle school (ages 11-14) was NOT for me. Later on I worked in elementary grades as a substitute and I did much better at that. Right now I'm working with college students and last semester I still kind of lost it and snapped at a whining student that "this is college, suck it up" (not verbatim, but jist of what I said).

Things *will* get better!

[fireheart]

Quoth 42_42_42

Things *will* get better!

Thanks.

They have. The last two days were a LOT better as I was told to back off a little bit and take things a bit slower. It worked: by the end of the day the kids loved me-mostly. It would've been an issue at a mainstream school anyway, but because of the nature of the school it was an even bigger issue. (we also discussed that part of the problem was that I had been present when my mentor teacher was disciplining several of the boys for disrespecting their music teacher and had therefore got the wrong idea)

Because they are working on the class play at the moment, I volunteered to work with them even after my placement was over since the time allocated for play practice is when I don't have a class. The rule with that sort of thing is that provided you don't have a class on, you are allowed to help with extra-curricular activities.

I also brought forward my suggestion to the teacher about a craft project that ties in with their new main lesson in Week 4. Because their new main lesson will be on Ancient Rome, I asked about doing mosaics. She loved it.

ETA: I also got to see a Bothmer lesson in practice. The kids didn't like the teacher, but a lot of them LOVED the class. The idea of Bothmer is more about helping their co-ordination, rhythm and balance (rhythm in this aspect refers to the rhythm of everyday life, encouraging them to slow down a bit more and balance is more referring to them being able to balance the new challenges in their life with what they already have). So they'll do exercises involving patterns over staves and throwing the staves at one another to a certain command (for instance, if a student has a stave in his hands, "short" refers to passing it between his/her hands, while "long" requires the student to throw it to their partner. The same exercise might be repeated on the ground with everyone having their sticks in a circle end-to-end, in this case "Short" being a jump over their stave and "long" being a jump/leap to the next stave)