Day 112: 22/4/13
Today I'd the day booked in already doing Teacher Release at a school. It was near a train station so it was easy to get to, even though the website for public transport isn't the easiest to follow! For some reason they wanted me to get a tram to flinders but I got a train in Melbourne central that brought me the whole way to the stop I needed to go so I don't know why they'd say that!
The school today was less than 10 minutes away from the train station so it was grand. I wasn't due to start until 9:30 but I got there by 9:00 so they asked me to start at 9:00 instead. That was good because it means I get paid for a full day! I rang the agency afterwards to confirm this so hopefully they pay me for it!
I spent the whole day going in and out to five different 3/4 classes and 4 different 5/6 classes. Each of the teachers had a half hour meeting and I minded the class while they were gone. It was grand because there was always work left and it really was just babysitting. Even though the day was easy, it went a lot slower than normal days because I wasn't actually doing anything. Most of the classes were out doing writing while I was there so they were just writing or editing their writing. Some classes were working on their learning goals- they had to pick a maths goal, an English goal and a personal or behavioural goal to focus on for the term. Other classes were doing maths- collecting data and doing graphs. One of the classes were writing postcards as an example of persuasive writing- trying to persuade others to visit the place they were in- that was a nice idea. All the classes had netbooks or iPads- they seemed to be personal ones so they must have paid for them themselves. When they were doing their writing, their final draft was on the computer. It was interesting when they all whipped out these iPads!! One class were doing reading and were supposed to pick out the language features in two different articles. Two classes worked together for that so there was another teacher there anyway and I was asked to work with a group of 6. I had no clue what they were supposed to do really a it had listed that they were supposed to look for nouns, adjectives, quotes, references, facts, dates, rhetorical questions, etc in each article and write it into a Venn diagram- the centre showing what they had in common. The kids were just writing main points from the article in the Venn diagram- no language features. From what I could see everyone was doing that so I don't know what language they were suppose to be looking for!! If they were to list lots of adjectives or whatever from the text they wouldn't have enough room in the Venn diagram anyway, so I really don't know what was going on! The teacher said they couldn't go out for break unless they were finished so I did my best to help them make a summary out of it anyway!! They seemed to get out for break anyway!!
The school seemed nice enough and all the kids were fairly good so it should be okay going back Wednesday and Friday. It's weird going from one class to another as you have nowhere to base yourself. Also, I was first in the staff room at lunch as I had no class to supervise eating. The teachers are never that friendly in the staff room- they always just sit with the one r two they know and make no effort with anyone else. In this school there are a load of student teachers in at the moment so they are easy to talk to! One of them was pushing on 40 I'd say and he was from the States. I was talking to him at second break and he was saying he'd found the classroom management an eye opener. I'd say it must be his first tp. I was in his room straight afterwards then and he was watching everything I did and told me he was impressed the way Id handled them- so at least to a student my classroom management is good!! It's weird that there's always another class that can hear everything as there's always a teacher that can hear you. It was especially weird for me today as I could be in one side of the partition in the morning and then the other side in the evening.
On the way home I got a call to work tomorrow in an Erasmus school, whatever that means!! They rang back to tell me that this school do things a bit differently, a bit old school- they have no IT and all eat lunch together, staff and students. They were asking if Id be comfortable going there- of corse I said yes. But I'll be interested to go and see what they actually do there!! It's grade 2 so I don't have to worry about more Hard English lessons!! It's great to know every day this week where I'm going- I'd love if they kept this up!!
I went to Laura's house then to iron some clothes for teaching. They will probably be wrinkled again by the time I get to the hostel, but the main wrinkles will be gone!! Laura was working as an SNA today- I didn't even know we could do that! That would be interesting for a day or two aswell! She doesn't know about pay though, it probably isn't the same as normal teaching.
By the time I finished ironing and chatting and made my way back to the hostel it was time to get ready for bed again!