Reflecting On My Teaching (Transcript)
M3: I think the first ... the first couple of times I actually visited the school the ... trying to get to know the kids but I found that a little bit difficult. You know, they're ... I had Grade 5s but you know they're different age and all that sort of stuff. But I think to ... to sort of overcome that so I could get like, you know, their trust sort of thing was probably one of the hardest things. But if I could ... in ... the way I overcame that was just if I could find something that I had maybe a common interest in with the ... with the child, then I could, you know, start to talk to them like that, gain their trust, get them comfortable and then they were comfortable with me. So that was probably the way I went about that, just trying to gain a little bit of common interest or even just find out what their interests are so therefore I can, you know, talk to them about that and then we move on from there and we start to develop a bit of a relationship. So that was probably the hardest thing that's how I overcame that.
M2: I had an English class and I was doing ... I was doing Merchant of Venice at the time and a text that I ... I love, that I ... I find very engaging. There was ... we had a great DVD, a contemporary DVD with Al Pacino as Shylock and I had all this sort of very pertinent, relevant sort of material I thought would be engaging for the class and for the students. But it just fell really flat and from the beginning of the introduction trying to get them to sort of brainstorm ideas on Shakespeare there was no inspiration from the class at all. I was very disheartened because I didn't have that sort of mentorship in place. It was very new to me. I didn't really know how to deal with it at the time. I perhaps didn't have the skills and tools that I've ... I've gained over my time here at the university to be able to tap into, to come up with different pedagogies, different activities and get different levels of understanding and depths of knowledge and stuff. I didn't have that at the time. So really, coming out of the class when I'd ... it had been very ... I'd meant for a very student-centred class with a lot of activities planned, it became more of a teacher-centred, you know, I just almost dictated to them what they needed to know. I felt more like I was lecturing them. And for a Year 9 class which in the UK would be equivalent here of a Year 8 class, it just ... you could tell they were very ... it was a double lesson, it's over an hour long, it's towards the end of a day, and they just ... they weren't interested at all and you can see the telltale signs on any student's face when they're clearly not engaged and not paying any attention to your class. So I was very disheartened and reflected at quite a length at that, that evening as to where I think I went wrong and what I could do in the future. And what I did the next lesson was actually to try and draw the kids into a sort of ... a sort of debate form to consider the main themes from the ... from the text but then I sort of linked it to a contemporary idea of sort of Jerry Springer show. I tried to give them something that they could actually relate to and it worked. So you know, I guess that's every part ... job of a teacher, you know, for every well planned lesson there are going to be pitfalls and it's how you respond to that and how you react to that that determines you know, where you're going to progress beyond that. And this occasion I reflected, thought of something a little bit more topical, more relevant to actually link the material to it and it paid dividends, so, you know, it was good.
M4: Okay, my mentor for one of my Year 9 classes as well, he asked me to do ... to teach to the kids in a particular way and he said look, I don't think it's going to work but I want you to try it and see how bad a lesson can go. So I just sort of walked into the classroom, said hello and just started writing questions on the board and then I said to the students, alright then, all the answers to these questions are on pages 60 to 65 in your text book. Read through all that text and answer the questions on the board. And there were kids sort of lying with their head on the book and just really sort of disengaged and even when I walked around and tried to get them back on task they were just like oh I don't want to do it now, this is boring, oh and just, I got a lot of complaints and yeah, it was a good learning experience for me because the teacher sort of ... or my tutor had put me in that situation where I had to teach in that way and I wasn't happy about it but it gave me a good sort of look at how a class can go bad. And yeah, maybe out of the 25 students I was teaching there was probably 10 that did the work and the others they all sort of, I wouldn't let them leave until they had it done because they had lunch afterwards and they were really angry at me and it took me a couple of weeks to get the kids back on my side.
M1: I can think of an example where these weren't the plumbers, they were a VCE Year 11 class and we were doing a ... a lesson on To Kill a Mockingbird, one of the chapters. And it was the chapter where, I'm just trying to think of the character's name ...
I: Jem Scout?
M1: Ah yeah, Jem Scout and who was the father? What's his name?
I: Oh, it's ...
M1: Just did it.
I: ... Atticus.
M1: Atticus, yes, that's right. So Atticus shoots the rabid dog in the street and in that chapter that was kind of the pivotal moment where the kids realise that their father is actually a lot more courageous than they think he is. And so my mentor was suggesting that we could do a lesson about the way that children perceive their parents, okay, and how, you know, they might often perceive their parents in a way that doesn't actually correlate with what they are in reality. Okay, so that ties in really neatly with the theme in that chapter. So one of the activities I thought I could do to trigger their interest in this chapter was to get them to think about their own parents and to sort of give a few descriptors of what their ... what they think their parents are like. And so I ... I kind of put this out and then there was one student in ...in the classroom who kind of fell really silent and I thought okay, why isn't this person participating? He's got his hoodie up and he's ... he's just really solemn looking. And so I went up to him and said you know, you don't have a group, you know, do you want me to assign you to a group? And he just didn't respond. And I tried again and he suddenly got up and he said, you know, I have to go otherwise I'm going to snap. So he just ... he just left. And I was kind of shocked and I wasn't really sure what's happening. But at the back of my mind I think I knew what was the reason because when I was planning this activity I thought there might be some kids in there who have problems with their parents and you know, how was I going to introduce that activity in a way that was sensitive to those ... to those children with different backgrounds. But because I was so rushed in the planning I hadn't put in a contingency plan or a good way of introducing the activity. So when he left I spoke to my mentor, I said you know, should I go after him, what should I do? And she said well you know, she would go talk to him. And so she did. And ... and then she later ... later she came to explain to me what the reason was. And so I guess the lesson I drew from that was when you plan activities you have to be sensitive to the backgrounds of the learners and to, yeah, to couch that activity in a way that would be good for them.
F8: My mentor really talked about the importance of having something to engage the students. You know, you really had to have that kind of hook which will grab their attention and make them interested. And I think a few times like I was quite nervous about presenting to the whole class and so that was probably the biggest disasters were made, were like those first you know, early lessons where I'd just be standing up in front of the class and just, you know, my voice would be shaking and I'd be so nervous and just, you know, getting through that was quite difficult for me. And also just not having the whole class engaged. That was when they really started to run riot and you know, my mentor would have to step in. So yeah that was quite difficult. I think a lot of it is just practise though, just getting in there and just doing it every day would just ... it would definitely get easier.
M2: I had a lesson with maths, it was measuring volume which, to be honest, I didn't fully prepare properly. When you're trying to do something with 25 kids outside with measuring jugs and water, that sort of lesson needs to be very fully prepared. I was ... was quite new to teaching at that time so I luckily had a mentor who kind of took over and sort of bailed me out a bit which is quite handy. And I think I just learned from that to ... to plan certain things in more detail, to have a backup plan in case something goes wrong. But I think the main thing is to ... not to be worried about your mistakes and not to try and pretend to the students that you know, you are doing everything right. To say to the kids hey, this has gone wrong, what can we do to try and make it better. And actually involve the kids in the process of trying to sort of make something that goes wrong right. And I think the students appreciate that.
F1: I think in terms of challenges, my biggest challenge was my first year. And in terms of challenges across the board it's generally been issues with a mentor because it's hard to be stepping to someone else's classroom. And sometimes it's hard for them to have you in their classroom and to let go of the control of what they do in there and hand it over to someone who perhaps they feel is inexperienced. So in my first year I found that really difficult with my mentor. I found to communicate I found it hard because I was a little unsure of ... of where I stood in ... in the classroom and I don't think that we communicated enough about what my role in her classroom was to be. To overcome it I had a really great community coordinator at the time. She helped me a lot. She was coming to the school fortnightly, so 'cause we were doing single site days. She was there every second week and the best thing she did was she spoke to myself and my mentor individually and I think sometimes community coordinators will sit down as a whole team and that's hard if you are having issues with something at the school to discuss it openly when a part of that school community is sitting there next to you. So yeah, it was ... it was good having the community coordinator there and she was able to listen to what I was saying, go and talk to my mentor and come back to me and ... and give me that encouragement that no, everything's fine and ... and everything will be okay. So, yeah, it's generally communication I found can be challenging at times but comes with confidence. I always wanted to do a remote placement because I went to a primary school that had 49 students in it. So coming down to Melbourne and doing metropolitan placements was always in big schools in a lot of in ... I did a lot of inner city placements. So I wanted to d a remote placement to get an idea of what it's like to be a teacher in ... within a smaller community. I went to Echuca primary school and I was teaching in Grade 1/2 classroom and I just found, even though it was a big school, it still had 400 or so students in it and the classroom still had 23 students, so even though it was still a big school and big classroom, the community feel was a lot stronger and the parental involvement I found was a lot stronger. Students were bumping into teachers in the supermarkets and all that kind of thing that happens with a small town. So the community feel was there, I found, a lot more than in ... in a metropolitan school and it's just a good experience to see how country schools can work with less resources. So things like excursions to science works or to the museum isn't as accessible as it is for a metropolitan school so where they, you know, they have a lot more incursions, people coming to them and really utilising the things that are surround their town and that kind of thing. But it was good. I really enjoyed it.
F6: One of the main challenges I had was timing of a lesson and when you ... I mean it's important to keep you eye on the clock but sometimes students will take a long time to make something or do something and one situation was we were making 3D shapes out of newspapers and so there was a lot of brainstorming and children trying different ideas and that took a lot longer than expected. And they had to create these from just sheets of newspaper and masking tape and if you just imagine the mess that was going on in the classroom. And I knew that the lesson afterwards would be a joint lesson with the adjoining classroom come in and we'd instruct something new and ... and before I knew it the next class was walking in and there's the floor is covered in newspaper and I apologised to the other teachers and I'm really sorry, you know, and but just ... it just had to stop what everything was going on and just grab reliable students or students you knew that would want to help you and say right, we've got to get this clear, the floor cleared up so the students can come. And they all just worked together, pulled together and ... and the lesson might have started five minutes later but I was quite embarrassed and that, you know, I hadn't planned it properly and there was such a mess on the ground. I was working with two other student teachers. I had another student teacher in my class and the adjoining class had another one as well and we were given a two hour science block in the afternoon and we had to plan and run the whole thing. They gave us different activities and we had to decide how we'd run and operate the two hours. And we just found another, again, timing was a big problem and we're with our own group of students moving around to the different experiments and by the time you got to your, the last one there was just not enough time and so we talked about it and sort of workshopped how we could do it differently for the following week and we decided that each teacher would stay at the one experiment and the students would rotate that way, being like a third run around, your third group of students, you can sort of tailor and sort of adjust and adjust the activity given the amount of time you've got left sort of thing. And then if you're on the same experiment for a number of times you could sort of become more of an expert at it. And it sort of works a lot better.
F2: With early childhood, the biggest challenge will be that small children are totally unpredictable. So the thing that you think ... another example, there were some boys building on ... building some construction, every day they built these very intricate constructions. And one of the boys had his eye right down close and he said oh look, what I need here is ... is a level. And I said oh, do you mean like a spirit level? And he said yeah. I said oh what does the spirit level do? And he explained in quite good detail, you know, that it had the oil in it, it has to balance and the little bubble goes in the middle. So the next day I brought along some spirit levels, small ones, I bought some tape measures and a couple of squares. And he ... I said oh, is this what you were talking about? He said, oh, no, I'm not interested in ... I ... oh no, that's not what I was thinking of. He had a particular one in mind, probably the one his dad used which was a big one. I'd bought small ones and I hunted all over the shops, left, right and centre to buy small ones that were usable for them because you know, a proper sized one is ... is as big as a small child. Those sorts of things, also behaviour things particularly if children become excessively frustrated or upset or angry and that can be ... I found ... I find that challenging in that particularly when you're on placement and you're new on ... in placement and a child is upset about leaving their parent or whatever, and you might step in to say come on, we'll do such and such and the child just takes one look at you and (makes yelling sound) and he just screams and looks or ... you think oh no. Children will be as defiant and say no, I'm not going to. And so dealing with those sorts of things is always a challenge. I guess just maintaining your composure is always the best way to deal with it and obviously those management strategies that you use in a classroom work with individuals as well, so. I guess in early childhood, people have an understanding that it's just cute and that little kids are fun and that you just get to play with them and yes, that's all true but it's not always all true.
F3: And in terms of the observation, the writing reflections and stuff, for me, at the beginning I was not quite sure. I wrote a lot. And gradually I stopped writing about every little thing and focused on writing things that stood out for me, two, three little things that stood out and I wanted to take it with me. For example, I reflected about how teachers ... teachers' approaches and what I would like to embrace within my teaching in the future. I wrote about how I interacted with the kids and how can I improve my language skills so they can understand me. Or just, yeah, that's it basically and ideas of how to ... how to teach. I've been thinking about it actually recently about the philosophy that I would like to have as a teacher, is to explain the kids why we do things. I call it the how and why theory because ... oh, how do I ... yeah, it's just you know, get the kids to understand why we do certain things so they will have a different understanding, a conceptual understanding in a way, to understand why and how we do things and therefore their learning will be much more meaningful and purposeful. So in general this is how ... what I think. And I also saw that within my mentor who explained why she said that and I thought that was beautiful, that was excellent because I got to see the kids, like they had this facial expression of mm, okay, I understand. It's just that I could see that in their eyes and it made sense to me as well.
F4: One particular child has a learning disability and she doesn't have the ... that strong foundation at home so I found for her in particular that I did have to adapt the lessons, I did have to adapt how I communicated with her. And yeah it was ... it was also concerning because she'd come to school at times and she'd say that she hadn't had breakfast and she hadn't had lunch so I'd constantly communicate with my mentor over that. And that was an issue that the school was also tackling wholeheartedly. So you know, that's a bit concerning but it's something you have to deal with on a daily basis.
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