It's been a little while since I've posted in my blog. Three weeks of practicum are done now and I feel like I'ver learned so much in the last two weeks. The two most notable events last week would be a field trip and my second experience with a supply teacher.
First the field trip. I was really excited about this. My school was going to be taking all of the grade 6s and 7s with a few 8s to fill in space to Roy Thompson Hall to see renowned pianist Lang-Lang perform with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. For days leading up to it I had excited visions in my head about teachers, parents and students all piling on school buses and heading downtown to see the TSO perform. The fact that I had personally packed all of the TTC tokens into envelopes for my AT to distribute to all of the homeroom teachers seemed to have eluded me until the night before. Suddenly the realization that 250+ students would be piling onto the subway to head to St Andrew's Station hit me. I didn't sleep well that night worrying about all the potential disasters that could/would occur. I was sure that at least five students would get lost and that one of them would likely suffer a most horrid demise...BUT...it all turned out fine. It was stressful and much more time consuming to get classes all the way downtown and back, but it all went off without a hitch. No students were lost, nothing horrible happened and Patrick even managed to get himself two free cans of silly string courtesy of the grade 6s we were in charge of that thought could get away with it.
On Thursday I met Mrs Koh. This was my second experience with a supply teacher during my placement at Runnymede. I felt much more confident of my abilities to deal with the classes with my AT, Mrs McLeod gone. Mrs Koh is a retired strings teacher that still does some supply teaching when people need her. When I asked my AT what Mrs Koh was like, she just laughed and said: "she's a firecracker". I also felt less pressure because she wanted me not to teach the string classes that day, but to just watch Velma(Mrs Koh) at work. I would be starting the day teaching the two primary classes and then she would take over. Those first two classes were hell. With a PA day the next day, Thursday was essentially a Friday in disguise, and with a supply and student teacher in the class it was open season for fun. By the end of the two classes, I had sent three students to the office, and had between 1-3 students sitting at the back of the class out of the group circle that we run our vocal class in. The primaries were chaos, but the string classes that Velma ran were a sight to behold. She had all the 7s and 8s wrapped around her little finger for the remainder of the day, with the exception on one class of delinquent 8s which she dished back to just as quickly as they did to her. I guess I still have a bit to learn!
Hey Kevin,
ReplyDeleteThat's awesome you got to go on a field trip! Nice work on not losing any kids haha. I enjoyed reading about your experience with the supply too as I have worked with a couple different supply teachers in practicum also. Similarly, the first time it was a supply and I had to tell grade 8 classes to run continuously for twenty minutes in the gym, it was chaos! Girls hiding in changerooms, boys bodychecking each other into the walls, it was not good! haha. I learned from it though and when my AT was away this week, I mischievously told the grade 8s that I would be assessing them during the run. Worked like a charm haha. Anyways, hope your last week goes awesome! Can't wait to see the Movember when we're back at OISE.
Cheers,
Matt
Hi Kevin,
ReplyDeleteI hope the students enjoyed Lang Lang concert and that you could relax and enjoy the music without worrying too much about the students! I saw the 101 Pianists event on Sunday Nov. 13 in which Lang Lang gave a masterclass to 100 young pianists all playing in ensemble Schubert's Marche Militaire. It was a great afternoon, and I knew 5 kids who were performers up on stage, including 2 at Westwood!
I also had a supply teacher with me 2 times when I was teaching, and both times they were excellent supports to me. One was a seasoned teacher, retired but who still did supply work, who knew all the kids and kept a tight ship. I learned a lot from her since she seemed to be the main supply for any teacher in the school so I saw her frequently. She was free in sharing her opinions and advice in the staffroom, and we got along great! The other supply was a really young man, recent grad I'd say, and he had a firm sense of classroom management (he had taught some of the kids before), and again, I learned a lot from him. So there you go, age is definitely not the determining factor!