Report Writing: An Exercise in Doublespeak

I feel dirty. I feel like an agent from Orwell's 1984; or like a modern day Australian politician. That's right; I am learning the art of report writing. The mastery of Doublespeak, Weasel Words and educationalese.

I am one-sixth of the way through my first report drafts. It's a slow process, that's for sure - although I am trying to be as efficient as I can be. The problem is learning how to express the unsavoury truth in the most savoury fashion possible - how to recast deficits in a positive light. How not to say "your child is a collosal pain in the rear and will probably end up being a trolley collector."

It's not all bad of course - there are a few shining lights - but in general I'm finding this process quite challenging. Definitely something that I feel underprepared for by my teacher education courses; and definitely a process I'll be working on improving next semester.

Week Six: Stress

Just a short entry today...

The kid I had hope about (last entry) has not reappeared in my class. Can't go into where he is but the longer he's away the more that hope I was building ebbs away. I can't make a difference if I don't see him :-(

Up to my ears in marking in preparation for writing reports. I was at school until 6pm today and only did a fraction of what I need to do. But I can't be too hard on myself - I was fairly productive in other areas during the time I HAD planned on marking. Still, need to find time to get all that marking done before I can write accurate report comments.

Gripe of the week: teacher registration. Paying an annual fee so that some brand new organisation can record my name as a qualified teacher. Um, sorry, but isn't that what my degree was for? Didn't I already pay through the nose for that qualification? And what exactly does registration get me? The right to work in a job I already have? Well that's fine then. Glad we've got that covered.

High: Got told by two students in two days that I was their favourite teacher. This means more from one than it does from the other - which sounds horrible but boils down to knowing the potential for making a difference differs between the two. One will do fine, with or without me. The other I see as being on something of a knife's edge - with some support and guidance I hope I can keep him on the right side of educational institutions. Without that support I can see him dropping off the other side. So being his favourite teacher is a pretty big deal.

Apologies for the telegraphic style tonight - must empty head before bed, but also don't have the time or inclination to unpack all these random thoughts in detail. This is just a snippet of my day today but if all I can reflect on is snippets, then 'tis snippets I shall reflect on. Until next time.

The Ups and Downs

What a week of ups and downs...

UP: We had an Open Night at school for prospective students and their parents this week, and two of my students spoke at the welcome ceremony. They did such a great job and I found myself absolutely bursting with pride. It was one of those moments that helps offset the hard days - they both rose to the challenge so well, and really represented us well.

DOWN: I had my first encounter with reporting suspected sexual abuse this week. That's not a good feeling at all. My heart really goes out to the family of this student - it must be every parent's worst nightmare to have this happen to their innocent child, and even worse when it's by someone they thought they could trust. Just a horrible, horrible thing.

UP: I became aware of the above incident because of two students who approached me to tell me in confidence of what they knew. I have to feel grateful, and proud, that these two students felt they could trust me enough to approach me about this - not the school counsellor, not their home group teacher, not their parents - but me. I think that's a pretty big testimonial to the relationships I'm forming.

DOWN: It's been a long week with a lot of work going on. I'm still dealing with behaviour management challenges, as I am beginning to suspect I always will, and I've been doing some really long hours this week, with no end in sight (save the winter holidays - six weeks to go!)

UP: I have a student (previously mentioned) who is a particular challenge, one for whom I had earlier believed I represented a restrictive and hated institution. I've been focusing a lot of thought on him - how to reach him, how to help him break through the barriers he's built himself. So far it's been by treating him with quite a lot of respect - probably a lot more than he's used to. I have been quite lenient with him so far, but have started slowly "raising the bar", and have been frank with him about doing so - telling him it's not fair to the other students that I let him get away with things I wouldn't let them get away with, and so on. Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather when he told me that he'd done our in-class assignment at home. Even more so when, despite having done the work at home, he continued with it in the classroom (the computer lab, no less - home to all manner of behavioural challenges for me!). And again when he repeatedly asked me for feedback throughout the lesson, with the most beautiful of manners ("Miss can you please have a look at this? Is it OK so far?")

I am beginning to hope - please don't let me be disappointed - but I am beginning to see a ray of hope, that he's on the up. All I want is for him to WANT to come to my class. To WANT to read a book. To WANT to try his best. And I think, bit by bit, we might be heading there.

Operation Relationship Building

I have a very challenging student in one of my classes. He has a long history of behavioural issues and has very patchy attendance. His first day in my class, he repeatedly unplugged peripherals from my computer and sabotaged the lesson. In one of our most recent lessons, he locked me out of my classroom and sat on his chair on the other side of the door. He is .... challenging.

My tactics with this kid from the outset have been clear - build relationship first, tackle academic achievement second.

Well, after a pretty patchy start I think Operation Relationship Building is underway. I 'bonded' with this kid today over a particular 1970s musician, and went so far as to pull up Youtube on my Smartboard to educate the uninitiated in our class. This was simply in response to him showing some enthusiasm about this musician, who I was speaking about earlier in the class.

This is a kid who I have to measure my successes with in very small steps. My successes with him today were getting through a whole lesson without him swearing; having him actually smile at me; having him be the last out the door because he was in no hurry to leave the classroom; him actually having his book out, and contributing to a discussion about grammar.

I know I'm not going to help this kid become a brain surgeon. But if I help him see that not all figures of authority are braindead, uncool, restrictive, unfair, mean, etc... then I've done something. And if all he learnt today was that "homo" means "same", then I've unlocked a bunch of new words for him. And if he turns up tomorrow and doesn't feel like locking me out of my classroom, that's a step forward.

I have to see the glass as half full sometimes. Seeing it as half empty, with some kids, is heartbreaking.

Term Two Begins

How lovely to have two weeks off! The major selling point of this job was just as good as I was expecting it be. I didn't use it productively - still stubbornly hoping to maintain separation between work and home life - but I think I'll be the better for it this term. Got to look after me first, THEN planning/marking etc.

But now that we're back on deck I'm wishing I had planned this week through - just to save some of the hectic stress of coming back in with nothing up my sleeve.

Next week is NAPLAN anyway so this week has been 100% persuasive writing (despite all of our objections to teaching to the test, it somehow becomes imperative to get those meaningful little numbers up...)

I've been frustrated tonight by the failings of the system - without going into too much depth this ranges from behavioural issue management (how to deal with the really troublesome kids) to the lack of funding/resources to support students with extremely low literacy, to how the blazes did these kids make it to high school with this level of literacy??

It's been a huge week, with afternoon professional development on two afternoons, one afternoon of after-school planning, attempting to learn how to manage a markbook, marking and the usual planning... But it's good to be back. I was starting to miss the little buggers.

Back to formal reflections

The scene: a typical Tuesday

1. Things that went well:
- Dealing with a newcomer to my class that will prove a challenge - so much so that this student may not stay in my class long. BUT I think I dealt with this student reasonably well - I gave the student two verbal warnings before exiting them from the class, spoke to them in the corridor to re-establish expectations, and upon reentry the student appeared more settled.

2. Things that I would do differently next time:
- Clearer expectations of a research activity. I should have given students a minimum number of points to achieve in each category within a retrieval chart (eg. "You need to have at least three dot points on women in Ancient Greece").
- If I posted the sources on the walls around the room I could have made a "Gallery" activity rather than a less engaging seated one.
- I could also have done with a broader range of sources, or better extension options for my more capable students.

3. Forward focus:
- Next lesson I need to integrate my newcomers more effectively. They need catch up work to bring them up to speed with this level of work - I can't put this activity off, they need it, so I think I will need to give this to them in their next lesson and prioritise it over the next activity which they will need to miss out on, at this stage.

Week 9: Just When I Thought We Were Settling In...

Well I hardly know it all by now but I was at least starting to feel a little more comfortable....

And then today one of our classes was collapsed due to staffing issues, meaning that each of my three classes now have an extra four or five students. They weren't big classes to begin with, so this is not a case of me complaining about large class sizes - but I feel like all of my work establishing classroom expectations, getting a feel for the dynamic of each set of students, creating seating plans that cater for those dynamics, and so on, now has to be repeated.

*sigh*

Just Another Average Monday

Last week I was beginning to feel really run-down: tired and cranky, frustrated with my lack of progress and not knowing everything when I need it, and basically needing a break.

On Friday I went to an all-day workshop on teaching reading, then drove two and a bit hours to a tiny country town for a two-day conference. Friday and Saturday nights were spent at the "local" with lovely like-minded educationalists, while Saturday and Sunday were spent with said educationalists in various workshops, followed by driving home, thinking about the planning I needed to do, and not doing any of it.

And so I find myself back at school, having had no real downtime, but somehow feeling a little re-energised. School today was uneventful, but I was in a better frame of mind, so even though I dealt with some of the same behaviour challenges and the like, I feel better about it. Maybe that's just because we've moved onto a new unit of work, and I'm kind of hoping that a lack of interest in the material could have been one of the problems in the last unit - hopefully I can inject a little more interest into the next unit of work (part-Ancient Greek History, part Australian Government).

Highlights of the day:
"Miss, does the Government help pay for school?"
"We love you Miss!" (yes, really. :-))
"Miss, how did the Labor party sack Kevin Rudd?"
From the same student: "Miss, why did Gough Whitlam get fired?"

On a little tangent: "Miss, if the Queen goes to McDonalds, does she get it for free?"

Behaviour Management

I feel I have to remind myself right now that I've only been teaching for six weeks, and I'm still learning... But I hate not knowing how to do everything straight away, the moment I need it.

I had my most challenging class (in terms of behaviour management) this morning, with assistance from a lovely executive teacher who works with me in this class for two hours per week. They were angels. Well, in comparison to their normal behaviour. The disheartening thing about this is that I can't get them to be angels by myself. By myself, I am shouting over the din, writing names on the whiteboard, moving students to time-out desks, sending students to other classes for time-out, calling parents, experimenting with positive reinforcement and challenges, and just generally struggling to teach them.

Don't get me wrong, this probably sounds worse than it is. I LIKE this class - at least, I like all the individuals IN this class. But together they're tough work. I'll break them in eventually (because the only alternative is them breaking me, and that ain't happening).

It's just disheartening because my executive teacher makes controlling them look so easy. So easy, in fact, that it's hard to pinpoint what she's doing right and I'm doing wrong. Another teacher told me today that it's because she has "The Vibe", and that I don't have that.

Harking back to my teacher training last year, I'm guessing "The Vibe" is one of Thomas Nielsen's "Powers": Referent Power, Position Power, etc. I'm reading Bill Rogers' "Behaviour Management" at the moment too, and it's abundantly clear from the way Rogers writes that he has "The Vibe" too.

The question is, how do I get it?

Feeling the pull...

I felt the pull today. The pull between pedagogies.

As anyone reading this probably knows, "pedagogy" has become THE word to learn in teacher training at university. If you can throw this into as many essays as you can, you'll do fairly well. It's taken me until today to really FEEL what it means though.

Today I was teaching Year 7 about past tense. We talked about the difference between "began" and "begun", "drank" and "drunk". I introduced them to terms like "past imperfect", and tried to use a little metalanguage when talking about grammar.

It was when we went over their answers that I stumbled. Somewhere between asking the first person, "What is the past tense of run?" and everyone getting the right answers written down, I became aware that I was drilling them.

I pointed to each present-tense verb on the board and said it.

They responded with the past tense conjugation.

"Swim"

"SWAM"

"Bring"

"BROUGHT"

"Buy"

"BOUGHT"

"Say"

"SAID"

.... You get the drill.

I feel like a failure. If my principal had walked in at that moment, they would have felt like they'd stepped back in time. All I needed was a cane and a blackboard. I was ashamed. It all happened so fast I couldn't stop it! And they were all so well trained!

...Which makes me think they'd done that before. Somewhere along the line they'd learnt to call out like that, in unison, with the correct answer. That's my one saving grace - I'm clearly not the only one who's done that with them. But I'm not going to do it again.

Something Beautiful

... Watching twenty twelve year old faces really thinking.

... A distractible boy turning a trip to the toilet down until after he could finish an activity.

... A boy picking up rubbish in the playground by choice, collecting the bin and dragging it back to where his friends could use it.

... Being truly impressed by a collective class achievement - who knew twenty kids could find sixty-nine separate words in "Astronomer"?!

Week Three: Camp

Well it only took two weeks for me to fail my "Weekly Reflection" goal! Hopefully I'll get the hang of this regular blogging gig eventually...

Week Three started as normal, with two days of standard classes, increasing levels of disruption in all classes, a call home to parents about one particular student, and a promise to myself to call parents more often after a very successful phone discussion with said parent and a notable improvement in behaviour the following day from said student.

On Wednesday the week got interesting as we headed off to Year 7 camp. What followed were some of the most exhausting days I've had since backpacking Europe. It was such a great opportunity to build connections with students, enhance our team cohesion and extend ourselves. We all faced our fears of heights with a giant swing, flying fox, abseiling and rockclimbing, drove dirt buggies, rowed dragon boats, completed an assault course, had a water fight, hosted a disco and more. The kids were so well behaved. It blew my mind how boundless their energy is though! At the end of each day I wanted nothing more than to trundle off to bed, but there they were running around after dark with torches, getting down at the disco and generally living it up.

Ten Things I've Learnt This Week:
1. Always, always, ALWAYS lock your cabin door.
2. Never underestimate your students.
3. We all need to get dirty every now and then.
4. Nothing beats a well timed Death Stare through a dark bedroom window.
5. You can never bring too much sunscreen.
6. You can never bring too many spare water bottles.
7. You can never bring too many Band-Aids.
8. Personally supervise all redheaded students' sunscreen application.
9. Teachers can go days without going to the toilet.
10. I can already see how much I'm going to miss these little tackers when they go onto Year 8. :-(

Week One: Reflection

Well week two has started without me getting a chance to formally reflect on week one, so here goes...

1. Things that went well:
- My introductory letter idea worked really well. I got 60 letters to read on my first night, and it was such an excellent "shortcut" into getting to know the students. I really want to tap into their interests where possible, so knowing what they are was really important to me. Getting a very early glimpse at their writing level was very useful too.

- Relationship building is coming along nicely. I knew I could never adhere to the "don't smile before Easter" rule, and I haven't even tried. Rather, I've been trying to create a connection with as many students as I can, showing interest in them, making small talk where possible, to get to know them and create some rapport. That part is going well.

2. Things that I would do differently next time:
- Seating plan was very unpopular in all three classes. Although it IS a good idea and I need to stick with it, I wonder if I could have softened the blow, perhaps by allowing them to request a table buddy?

- I would have loved to have this first three weeks mapped out in a cohesive unit. The focus at the moment is on building a positive classroom environment, establishing a routine and introducing a couple of scaffolds that are popular at the school. I probably haven't focussed enough on the positive classroom environment side of things - I feel I don't have enough activities in my 'toolbox' for this.

3. Forward focus:
- I have several "big personalities" in one of my classes, who are a real concern for me. Not just that they are a disruption, but that I am SO afraid of not doing for them what I should be aiming to do for all my students: give them a quality education. I really want to work out the 'key' to all of them, but at the same time (and maybe first?) I have to combat their disruptive tendencies.

- As a 'good girl' myself, I have empathy for my 'good kids' - the quiet ones, who try to do their work, but are thwarted by the disrupters. The problem with the nice, quiet kids is that it's dangerously easy not to notice them. I have to consciously work on making sure that EVERY student gets my attention, not just the 'big personalities'.

Week One: Getting To Know...

Well week one is only half way through, and I'm stuffed! This is just a brief note since I have planning to do for tomorrow between now and when my head hits the pillow (in roughly 59 minutes!).

I have three year seven classes, and so far they all seem like really nice kids. I have the obligatory handful that will be a challenge - just some low-level behaviour to keep an eye on - and some kids that will need some special attention from me, but thus far I'm pretty happy with my bunch.

I wrote a letter to the students before the first week and asked them to write me a letter on the other side, introducing themselves, their interests and so on. I told the kids it was to get to know them - and it was - but it was also for assessment purposes as well. It made for really lovely reading on my first night, and I'm looking forward to pulling the letters out again later in the year to see how their writing has changed.

Other than that I am just run off my feet, trying to get the hang of the level of organisation I need to keep on top of things, and looking forward to a sleep on the weekend. Will write again soon!

One week down...

Well I've just finished my first week of being a teacher - minus the students. This week, "Week 0", was all induction and professional development sessions, curriculum planning meetings, year group meetings, new staff meetings, and so on. I found most of the sessions really useful - although I can see that for returning staff they could feel like a waste of time. I certainly got value for my time though - getting to understad the whole school curriculum philosophy, their use of the Learning by Design framework, dipping my toe into Cooperative Reading and more.

I have my very own classroom (lucky me!) only two doors down the corridor from my staffroom, which is REALLY convenient. I spent a couple of hours in there making it 'mine', rearranging the desks into sets of four, taking down some old student work from the walls and generally tidying up a little. I'm really excited to have an interactive whiteboard, TV, video/DVD player and computer in the room - although I'm not planning on being a heavy ICT user until I'm much more comfortable in my style of teaching, it's great having these resources in there. Especially the IWB - I find I use it mainly as a projector at this stage, displaying Powerpoint prsentations, but after I get some more training on the Notebook software that could change.

By the end of the week I actually feel quite comfortable at the school, and as though I've got a fair idea of what I'm doing this term (or at least next week!). But I haven't clapped eyes on a student yet! So the real test is still to come. I'll TRY to do a weekly reflection on here I think, but it'll depend on my time management skills. Wish me luck!

D Minus 2 Days

I officially start working in two days' time - the summer holidays seem to have both flown by and lasted forever. I read by the pool on my new Kobo e-reader (Pride and Prejudice, the Communist Manifesto, Alice in Wonderland, Dark Angel...), caught up with friends, and basically enjoyed my last taste of uni student freedom. (And avoided spending money - bring on that first paycheck!)

I did obviously spend some time thinking about my coming year, how I will cope, how I will approach my classes, what I'll be teaching etc - but not as much as I would have liked to. I'm going in with a strange feeling of excitement/trepidation/fear - but from the looks of things I'm in the best possible environment to start such a daunting career. I really like the school and staff, the collegial atmosphere, group planning - and then being a part of online communities that I can resort to for support when I need it. So honestly, I'm set up so well for this year, I just have to knuckle down and hold up my end of the bargain now.

Will keep you posted!

Week 8: Just Keep Swimming...

The end of the term is in sight and I can’t help this sense that I just have to keep plugging away, it’s almost over. I can’t believe my first whole term of teaching is already almost finished! I still have loads to learn but I do also feel that I’m starting to settle in. I know what meetings to be in and when, which kids are in which classes, where to find various files, and who to speak to about various issues, etc.



Finding my feet in the classroom is slightly different – there’s no doubt that I’m more confident in there than I was in the first week, and that I have more of a clue in general. But there’s still a LONG way to go. I am still grasping that essential “scaffolding” skill. I am still grasping just HOW MUCH scaffolding my students need to get tasks done, and how to provide that scaffolding in such a way that I don’t feel like I’m doing all the thinking for them. I have a number of students who are much lower than I thought they would be in year seven, and find myself lacking skills that I need to teach them. I’m struggling with how to differentiate work, and how to manage a classroom when students are working at different paces. I have faith that all these skills will come in time, because I’m constantly thinking about them and taking advice from people who know better. I just wish I knew it all now!!