I maintain....

Coming to the end of my second teaching placement, I maintain that the most important part of teaching is to have a good rapport/relationship with your students. Not only will they behave for you but they will respect you and it will make your job a lot easier. If there is no trust then it makes your job in engaging students a lot more difficult.
I can see the benefit of teaching placements in a diped and I cannot see how it can be avoided because I think it's essential to get practical experience. However, the time it takes to settle into a new environment is barely enough to get to know the students you will be teaching and for them to feel comfortable with you in the classroom, teaching them. You are in and out and it becomes difficult to build a routine. This is one aspect of teaching that will be only heightened once you have your own class and time to build on those relationships.

Week 4

I am nearly at the end of my second placement. Although my posts are few and far between I feel as if it has been rewarding to have a record of at least my feelings when I start and finish a four week block. The things that seemed like I would never understand have become a little clearer to me, although there is still so much that I don't understand. The experience of teaching adults has definitely been a positive one and there is so much that you have to think about differently. For example, adults are not children obviously and so should not be treated as such. There can be a fine line between talking slowly and clearly in a tone and voice that they will understand and being patronising or 'preachy'. For this reason, it is important to remember not to use materials that are for children. While visuals are excellent they do not have to be too 'picture story bookish'. There is a wealth of resources out there for adult learners so it is important not to revert to childlike materials.

I have just begun my second round of placements. This time around I will be teaching adults instead of year 7 and 8s and the thought of that is a bit overwhelming. I am under the impression that this will be a very rewarding experience but a very different one from the experience I had teaching in high school. I have heard that there is virtually no problems with classroom management which was a challenge during my last teaching rounds. A challenge which I found took up a great deal of class time. I have since heard from different people that something like 30% of class time is wasted with discipline and time wasting. However I am convinced that this is neither a good thing nor a bad one as now I will have the full attention of the class when I ask for it and this is a little nerve racking as I need to be very prepared and have back ups in place to combat boredom and have enough relevant content to fill in the alloted time. As I have not begun teaching yet I will post more when I have experienced more first hand.

Last day of placement.

Well I am now on the last day of my placements for my first round of teaching placements and I am a little sorry to be leaving. When you go everyday you really tend to bond with the teachers around you and the students as well. It's only now that the students are really getting used to having me around and the year 7s especially are looking to me for help and guidance. This is a huge improvement from how awkward I was feeling in the first week.

Although I have not been teaching for the last few days I am able to have a deeper understanding of how the school runs and am beginning to see the different working styles of the students. It is a little bit of a shame that I am now having to go back to study.

On the other hand I am glad to be going back to uni because I am keen to keep going so that this year will turn into a beneficial stepping stone to next year when hopefully I will get a job. It will also be good to share some of the experiences I have had with other students and to hear some of their stories. I am interested to see who has positive things to say and who had a not so pleasant experience (hopefully there won't be many!).

Classroom management....

From all of the classes I have taught so far and the feedback that I have received from supervising teachers the thing that is almost the most essential thing to have in the classroom is good class control. From this comes many different aspects but it is very important to make sure that you are respected by the students. In order to gain respect it is important that you carry through with instructions and if punishment/consequences are required for actions that are not acceptable that they are fair and just and equitable to everyone in the class.

I am a big fan of the 'hand up' policy that this school has. It requires patience but I am improving in this area. I think that it is important that I not raise my voice when it is not necessary. In fact, I think that it is usually not necessary and often loses the respect of your students. Therefore it is essential to outline your expectations and follow through. For example, if you want hands up for silence and for answering questions then you need to follow through and expect the same behaviour from everyone. Moreover students should not speak while the teacher is speaking and perhaps even more vital is that students should not speak over one another. If noise starts in one corner of the room it can very easily spread very quickly and get out of control. It is important in this situation to remain calm and pull them back to task, this is why I like the hand up policy of silence. Although I am not convinced it will work for older year levels.

Week 3

I have taught quite a few lessons now and am beginning to feel much more comfortable in front of a group of students. I am starting to see the difference between the different year levels in learning styles. For examples the year sevens that I have taught tend to be quite a bit slower than the year eights. They are constantly trying to adapt to the different learning style that they school encourages. For this reason it is important that I recognise their difficulties with direction. It is often imperative that I give very clear, basic instructions such as get out a piece of paper and a pen, write your name at the top of the page---then walk around the room and make sure everyone has followed the instructions. It is easy to just assume that they will just follow instructions but a lot of the time they may not have been listening or do not understand.

One of my main observations so far in this placement has been that the longer I am at the school, the more comfortable the students are talking to me and how much better they respond to my requests if I know their names and they feel comfortable with me in the classroom and even in the halls. I think it is essential in teaching to build a good rapport with your students.

I have many more observations..........

Week 1 & 2

I've been in placements for two weeks now and I thought that it was probably way beyond time to write another post.

The experiences I have had so far have been very interesting. I would not say that I have been wholly surprised by the experience but it has been a steep learning curve. My first lesson in week one was on something that I was not really confident that it was in my subject areas but I figured that it was all part of being a teacher and from day one I had convinced myself that I was going to be flexible and just "go with the flow". It seems I've been doing a lot of this lately.

I've yet to actually teach something in my subject area but it seems that most of my feedback has been that I need to work on classroom management. I've found that it's sometimes difficult to pinpoint how exactly to improve in this area but I think that it all comes with confidence.