Week One was pretty good because I was mainly shadowing other teachers. On week two I found out my full schedule -
Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday: I team teach (which means I work directly with another teacher....this is amazing) the grade 6/7's in the mornings and part of the afternoon. I also cover preps* for the 3-5 class and the K-2 class in the afternoons.
Thursday/Friday: I teach the 3-5 class all day.
* For all of you non-teachers reading this, a "prep" is an allotted amount of time that each teacher gets to prepare for the week. It is usually one block, once or twice a week. If you ever had a library teacher, a music teacher, or a computer teacher who was different that your homeroom teacher in elementary school, it's because your teacher was busy preparing materials for the next lessons that week.
Anyway, my weeks are pretty strange. I don't have a classroom to call my own. I was a little sad about this at first because being a new teacher I was really excited to decorate and finally take control of my own lessons (in teacher school you always have someone judging your lesson plans). But I'm getting over this. It's kind of nice to have the change of pace! My desk is in the library so that I can be mid way between all my classes as I run back and forth (they said they hired me for my energy and enthusiasm).
However, my second week was kind of horrible. I really learned what it felt like to be disrespected as a teacher. The 6/7 class was my biggest challenge. This class is tough to teach on a good day. They walk out of the room without asking, they do not pay attention, some refuse to work, saying "No" over and over , they constantly ask to go to the bathroom, they fight with all their teachers, they fight with each other, and they just generally do not respect teachers (the way that I'm used to). Think back to those days when you thought you had a kid in your class who drove the teacher nuts, this one class is FULL of them.***Please read the update on this class in the next posts***
On Wednesday afternoon I was trying to teach a Health and Career lesson and it was going SIDEWAYS. It got to the point where one of the students went and got help from the First Nations liaison lady without being asked because SHE was fed up. This particular lady who came is VERY respected in the community. As soon as she came to the class all of the students were FABULOUS and we got through the lesson. The next lesson was art. We were doing painting. It was going great. Then the lady left....Most of the students finished early so I decided that we would go outside and collect leaves for the art board. Some students asked if they could ride their skateboards while we picked up leaves along the side of the road. I said yes. HUGE MISTAKE! I spent the next half an hour trying to get the class to come back inside. It never happened. I was told to my face that students "hated this class", under their breath that they "hated" me and by the end of the day I was in tears because I had felt like such a failure all afternoon. I had been warned that this was a tough school and I thought I could handle it....but that afternoon I wasn't sure. I wanted to pack up and go back to Coquitlam.
On Thursday I was teaching the grade 3-5 class. Lucky for me, this day went great. The students got through all of the lessons and I didn't have any major problems. But I couldn't get Wednesday afternoon out of my mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment