Be deliberate this year: jump through the necessary hoops without resentment, maximizing the benefits along the way

and yes, it did become as tedious as I had feared. Now that my university program is complete, what am I going to do with myself?

I can’t decide if I should mark this goal as ‘done’ or not… I jumped through the hoops to become a qualified teacher, but unfortunately I haven’t quite figured out where to take it from here.

The local job situation is a complete disaster (major urban area, everyone wants to work here, competing with more experienced teachers even for part-time & temporary positions).

I like teaching, but I don’t feel very inspired to become chained to a classroom and deal with kids in groups of 30 all day. So I need to come up with alternatives which will still provide opportunities for growth (professional and personal).

I’ve only been finished my studies for a day, but I’m already flailing a bit. What to do next? I am not even really sure I want to be in this city, yet I don’t not want to be here either. The whole two years I have lived here, I haven’t particularly enjoyed it, but I do bear a lot of responsibility for that. I have had my nose stuck in books most of the time, and then there was that crappy, soul-sucking job I had for 9 months just to pass the time while I waited to start my teacher training program. Gah.

Now it’s summer time, the weather is fabulous and I have tons of free time (very little money but oh well, what can you do?). I need to go DO FUN STUFF, get off my tush.

Just finishing up soaring over a major hurdle… the landing will be a piece of cake.

Next, just another massive wad of money to pay and a final month of drudgery at the Uni. Then, voila! I will be free.

And have to find something else to do with myself. Eeep!

If you want a group of tweener kids to happily do stuff they normally wouldn’t like (such as cleaning), just get a stereo, let them plug one of their ipods in, and give it some decent volume.

Suddenly they’re all in a good mood and think you’re a cool teacher.

:-)

We’re encouraged by the university to get involved in extra-curricular activities during our teaching practicums (practica?).

Did I mention that I have become a hockey coach? HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! I find that terribly funny. It’s grade 7 girls cosom hockey. Don’t know what cosom means? Neither did I. Essentially it’s indoor ball hockey. Actually I’m still not clear on why they call it cosom hockey instead of ball hockey.

Luckily for me (and the team) the other coach knows what she’s doing. But I did the practice by myself last Friday and they said they liked me better cause I don’t make them do warm ups or drills, I just let them go play and listen to loud music ;-)

Tournament is tomorrow.

I have to write an 800 word paper about math, with 3 references. I can’t even come up with a specific topic to write on. Most of it needs to be done by the end of the day today.

Bleh. I’m SO not motivated.

Apparently some of the students miss me now that I’m not on practicum anymore. That’s cool.

And a not-so-good incident with a student turned out to be no big deal. Thank god – I was worried for a little while there. But my sponsor teacher seems to like me better now that I really laid down the law on the rotten kid – especially since I got away with it (apparently rotten kid threw a chair at the last teacher who tried to stop him).

I’m thinking it’s coming in handy that I grew up in a little rural “wild West”-type town!
:->

was a lot better. Still had highs and lows though.

One student kept trying to feed me candy._{Unfortunately, it was the yucky kind that only kids like.}
One my last day, one of the classes made a little card out of a sheet of paper, pencil crayons and a scratch and sniff sticker,and most of the students signed it. One wrote “Have fun in Antarctica” (ha!).
That was sweet.

And the class average for my test was 82%, so obviously I wasn’t working them too hard!

First week almost over.

After my first lesson (Monday), my sponsor teacher said “if you can’t get better control of the students than that, you’ll fail the practicum”. Eeeeep!

Today was my first official assessment (I’m supposed to have one lesson assessed each week). After today’s lesson, he said “Wow, I have never seen them so quiet and attentive for so long!”

(See previous entry about this class)

The only problem is that yes, my performance and organization is one thing that affects student behaviour, but I’ve seen that the students also simply have good and bad days. I hope my other assessments go well, because I don’t think I’ve totally got them under control yet, but we’re getting there!

Rarr! ;->

Well, one semester later…

I can’t truly say I have been deliberate so far. I started out with a bang in September, then burned out a little by October and became influenced by some rotten influencers whose primary goal in life is to squeak by with the least amount of effort possible.

The term ended with a) me stressing about an end of term deadline that I was not going to meet, b) jetting off for a week of vacation regardless, having mentally assessed that my instructor is too soft-hearted to actually fail me for not having done it, therefore I have decided not to submit the thing at all(!)

So, I must regretfully report that the only progress I have made on this goal is that I managed the “without resentment” part. :-(

Today was my first visit to my future practicum school.

While the overall school seems to be fine, I have been informed that the group of kids I will be teaching off and on for the rest of the year is THE CLASS FROM HELL. Well, more precisely, my sponsor teacher informed me that in the 33 years he has been teaching, this is the worst group he’s ever had.

Excellent learning experience, eh?

During my observations today, I was pretty amazed by how little the teachers were able to accomplish in a 50 minute class.

On a more optimistic note, I had been wondering why they had matched me (the social studies teacher who was identified on a “Personal style” activity as having a dominant personality and is about 7 years older than most other student teachers) with a science, math and PE teacher for my practicum.

Now I know. They were matching me to the students. Or rather, they realized how cruel it would have been to match the student teacher who wanted to be a PE teacher (mild mannered, hesitant, 22-year-old ESL Asian guy) with this class.

I see, I see, said the blind man (woman).

I’m ok with all that, I’m just a bit disappointed that all the lesson planning I am required to do for my social studies training course is going to essentially be a waste of time, and I’ll need to do twice as much preparation & paperwork as everyone else for my actual practicum.

As I mentioned before, I am already having problems getting everything done well and on time!