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"?!