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.