Friday, November 10, 2006

Whirlwind Week

One week of placement one over and it hardly feels like one day has passed. I've been really lucky in my placement. There's been some stuff on first class from people who are having a terrible time at their allocated school -and not necessarily because of the pupils.
I've done my first solo teaching, lots of co-teaching, two philosophy for kids classes, assessment of standard grade Individual Talk, and two portfolio tasks. We have an inspection on Monday For "How Good is our School" I'm not entirely sure where this fits in with HMIE but sure all will be clear on Monday.
The English Staff have had a tough week with parents night, the depute head sitting in to assess one of their lessons, a first year trip to Kelvingrove,CPD about emotional intelligence which appears to have gone extremely badly,one pupil going mad and throwing tables around, another asking a teacher to suck his nipples!? Everybody has been complaining about the squalid state of the staff base so the probationer and I took it upon ourselves to give it a good clean and tidy. 5 woman hours later it was transformed into a much more orderly,calm and clean place for them to retreat to.
Do most departments have an issue with discarding materials? We found advice for teachers re preparation for Highers dated 1982 amongst other things that were in plastic folders that had turned brown and were beginning to biodegrade. I would recommend any researcher trying to find a new antibiotic visits the base soon. The cleaners are really pleased and have mentioned that they may hoover the carpet so some boon to medical science may be lost. The cleaners aren't allowed to clean the window sills because they would have to stretch over desks and this is a health and safety risk apparently. Belladonna Curls and I are made of sterner stuff and I brought an extendable duster (available in any DIY shop) and we busted the dust there and in the classroom she shares with the Head of Department.
One staff member commented that I shouldn't wash dishes and file discarded resources because nobody else would and I was a professional not a manual worker. It was Ok to display pupil's work on the wall but not to clean classroom windowsills.
I don't care.
I believe that people's built environment has an impact on their behaviour, if the staff base is dirty and disorganised with no human touches I believe the staff will feel more stressed and less valued. If the classroom is dirty and disorganised surely the subliminal message we're sending the pupil is that we don't value them. I think that is more unprofessional than rolling up my sleeves and getting out the Cif.
I wanted to do it as a thanks to the staff who have been so welcoming and helpful in the midst of a really mad school week. I also wanted to do it because I have to sit in the base when I'm not teaching and work on my portfolio tasks and I have S310 in the aforementioned classroom and if there is any chance of a cleaner environment helping with behaviour management I'm ready to give it a try.


Willie Loman's learning points this week
  • Used ICT to create Certificate of Achievement for those in S310 who prepared and delivered their individual talk by the due date. A personalised envelope with this and one of those pens with four colours of ink each delighted them. I had been a bit worried they would think it patronising and see through my "proximal praise" attempt but they were delighted.
  • My assessment of the individual talks mached that of the HOD (whoopee, am natural assessment genius.)
  • Got Int pupils to do formative assessment on the lesson I delivered re content of the poem. They loved the talking in groups and the teacher for two mins. They really liked that I checked their understanding and told them that if they didn't understand it that the problem was that I wasn't explaining it in a way that was appropriate for their needs and not that they were stupid. Like me they had felt muddled and unsure of what I was trying to achieve at the beginning of the lesson.
  • Schools are work places with office politics and rivalries the same as everywhere else. The pupils are ultimately the ones who suffer as a result.
  • Some pupils catch you totally unexpectedly, like the girl from S310 who has global learning difficulties who gave me a huge hug on her way out of period 6. I think this was because she was relieved her talk was over and delighted to get a certificate and pen. As soon as she left I could feel the tears welling up. I was at the same time very relieved that the HOD was in the room and could see that I hadn't hugged her I also wanted to check that I hadn't crossed the boundary with this class and this pupil in particular. I like them and I know that kids report that feeling liked by their teacher is highly important to them, however I am very aware that I must avoid over-friendliness . I was absolutely paranoid about the physical contact side of this encounter.The HOD was reassuring re my classroom presence being appropriate.He assured me that I was right not to push the pupil away or advise her that this was inappropriate though there would have been an issue if she had been a boy or had hugged HIM.( Don't know what the equality lecturers would have to say about that.). Most importantly he had a hanky so I didn't have to go home with Panda eyes from runny mascara.
  • I need to get the portfolio tasks out of the way and really get my head around the lesson plans for S1 and 3 without any distractions. I need to teach techniques for close reading for standard grade and do an introduction to poetry unit and I'm not good at concentrating on a number of tasks at the same time.
  • If I'm going to be a good teacher I am going to have to get very good at concentrating on a number of tasks at one time.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home