As some of you already know, I recently undertook a four-week full-time replacement teaching position at McKinnon Secondary College. Last week was my final week, and it capped off what was a busy but beneficial experience for my first serious engagement as a high school teacher.
I have had some time this week to relax and reflect on the four weeks, and this is what I feel I did well or showed progress:
- Building rapport with staff and students was one of my strong points as a student teacher. That has not changed thankfully, and some of the students I taught even asked me to stay and become their teacher! I am especially grateful, however, to have gotten along really well with the teacher who is the Head of Languages at McKinnon, Andrea Fowler.
- Although I had my share of "forgettable" lessons (doesn't every starting teacher?), there were a few lessons which gave me the confidence that I was heading on the right track of providing structured lessons with clear learning goals. I also tried a few activities which, with a bit of tweaking, appeared to engage the class.
- There was also noticeable progress made in my management of classroom behaviour. I felt that some improvement was shown in distinguishing between the role of teacher and role of student. I kept some students behind after class to have a stern chat, and even gave a detention. While these are not things to be proud about (Teachers enjoy giving detentions ... NOT!), they do mark significant milestones in my progression towards being comfortable as a disciplinarian.
And here are the areas for ongoing improvement:
- Finding ways to help disengaged students in class, or newly-arrived students (such was the case in two of my Year 8 classes) who speak English as an Additional Language and have no prior experience of learning German.
- Making clear first to myself then to the students the consequences for not behaving appropriately in class, and establishing expectation at the START of the lesson before any incidents arise. It's time to look again at the advice of Bill Rogers, the first person I turn to for help in classroom management.
- Giving myself enough time toward the end of a lesson to review what I have tried to teach, and then finding creative ways to test whether or not students have learned/remembered the language taught.
Now some of you may be wondering: where to from here? Well, I'm very pleased to announce that I will be continuing on as a teacher at McKinnon Secondary for the rest of the year, albeit in a reduced role. The deal is that I come in on Mondays and teach Andrea's classes for the day. I will be in constant discussion with her regarding where her classes are up to, and what she would like me to cover with them. Hopefully she will also give me some room to try some of my own activities with her classes. For the rest of the week I will be either relief teaching at McKinnon or Brentwood, or be back working at Big W.
Not only have I gained invaluable experience from the last four weeks, but I have also earned a decent amount of money, most of which has gone towards my airfares for the MUCS European Tour in January!
I can now confirm my basic itinerary: I will depart Melbourne on 8 January with Singapore Airlines and arrive in Amsterdam on the morning of the following day after a brief stopover in Singapore.
In Holland, I will catch up with friends and family before taking the train to Frankfurt on January 14 to meet up with the rest of the group. Our tour starts on the 15th and ends in Venice on February 5.
From Venice I will fly with Vueling Airlines back to Amsterdam with a brief stopover in Barcelona along the way. I will return to Melbourne with Singapore Airlines on the morning of February 6, scheduled to land in Melbourne on the evening of Friday February 7.
The return flight with Singapore Airlines cost AUD 2,275, and the one-way flight from Venice to Amsterdam cost 159 euros (nearly AUD 240 at the time of purchase). Now the only thing left to do is find a good deal on travel insurance, and pay off the remaining amount of the tour fee, and then it's a few weeks of giddy anticipation of heading back to Europe for the first time in over five years! I can't wait!!
And now to sports (You can skip this part if you find it boring). First of all, congratulations to the British and Irish Lions for winning the decider in Sydney. What made it slightly more bearable for me was that most of the squad was from Wales, a rugby nation which I admire greatly. Although the final score was 41-16, the Wallabies were in the game until about midway through the second half. Consequently, Robbie Deans has been replaced as Wallabies coach by Ewen McKenzie.
In cricket, the old enemy England has retained the Ashes after winning the Fourth Test in Durham. At least with the draw in Manchester, we won't lose the series 5-0 as I initially feared. However, the Aussies have a lot to work to do, especially in the batting department, before the Poms come here for the return series.
I want to finish this post by briefly reviewing two books which I recently used for one of my uni assignments: the graphic novel Relish: My Life in the Kitchen by Lucy Knisley (See customer reviews from Goodreads here and from Amazon here); and the young adult fiction novel It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini (See customer reviews from Goodreads here and from Amazon here).
Relish is Lucy Knisley's autobiographical account of growing up in a family obsessed with food. Knisley is an illustrator by profession, but from this book it's clear that food (and the enjoyment of it!) is her number one passion. If you want to find out more about her, go to http://www.lucyknisley.com.I came across this book when looking through the graphic novel section of a New York Times Sunday Book Review. I liked what I saw in the sample pages, and the rest of the book did not disappoint. Each chapter recounts a particular episode in Knisley's life, narrated in an honest, but very humorous and engaging style, accompanied by the author's own illustrations. NOTE: Look out especially for the recipes that Knisley includes at the end of the chapters! I have included a sample below:
If you have read The Perks of Being a Wallflower (mentioned in one of my earlier posts) and enjoyed it, you should take a look at It's Kind of a Funny Story. The plot basically deals with New York teen Craig Gilner, who checks himself into a psychiatric ward, suffering from depression and on the verge of suicide. During his stay, he meets an assortment of special characters who help him find a purpose to live. As a side-note, the author Ned Vizzini had spent time in psychiatric care before he wrote the book, and uses his first-hand experience to give Craig a special depth of character. For more info about Ned, you can visit his website at http://www.nedvizzini.comBefore I sign off this post, I just want to let you know that I have created a profile on the professional networking site LinkedIn. Feel free to check out my profile here and connect with me if you like.
OK, that's it from me for now. Cheers and God bless!
