absolutwillie

Month: September 2013

  • Melancholy moments

    Seven weeks in and we’re on our last day of classes. One week of exam invigilation to go and, according to my schedule, I am not likely to see my classes again. Of course I’ll see individuals in the corridors during next week, but I won’t get to see them all together again. This saddens me.

    It is uncanny how quickly I have learned to love the learners of this school! Thinking about leaving Worcester to go back to Stellenbosch and graduate is very exciting. Thinking about leaving these kids however, is not exciting at all… is this separation anxiety? Can’t be.

    My heart has been heavy all day.
    Maybe this weekend’s festival will cheer me up?

  • Sir's got swag

    I had a really good giggle this morning when one of the kids in my favourite (yes, I have one) class told me that I had “swag”. Apparently this was not only a compliment on my dress-sense, but on the way I teach and come across in general! Naturally I was flattered. It wasn’t all that long ago that the last thing anyone would ever have accused me of was being cool or having swag. I am sure my inner-adolescent blushed.

    My schedule today ended up having a great balance of both English as well as LO classes, as well as the opportunity to assist some Gr. 12s with their English exam preparations and a chance to sit in on an art period! All the good things in school ;0)

    After school I picked up some of the school paper kids and headed off to the teacher at the helm of the paper’s house, where I joined the editorial team in getting the term’s edition print ready. We set up our laptops around the dining table and got busy. It was great fun! My experience in printing came in very handy, and chatting with the kids turned out to be both entertaining and enlightening. The nicknames kids come up with are horribly funny, especially for their teachers! Apparently most of my colleagues from Stellenbosch University have been given nicknames as well. Some more kind than others. Naturally the learners didn’t want to tell me what mine was… saying that they will tell me at the end of my last day of practicum.

    Here’s ’til next Friday then!

  • Halfway through the last stretch

    It is funny to see how everybody else’s tension is building, while ours is subsiding. Polar opposites from our first two weeks here! We’ve begun finishing off our required lessons and admin, while the rest of the school is either busy with or gearing up for exams.

    My day was an LO day from start to finish. The Gr. 12s wrote the Departmental paper (final exam) for Life Orientation, which I invigilated. After that I had the Gr. 10s in class, where we continued talking about adolescence and how one could deal with different kinds of changes during that period. I was amazed at the solutions these learners came up with – and with the wisdom they seemed to possess in some instances! Equally amazing albeit less profound were some of the questions that were asked. Suffice to say that one needs to maintain a healthy sense of humor to survive teaching LO!

    I honestly love teaching this subject. It manifests one of my personal mantras:
    I live to teach – as long as I teach to Life.

  • Clean slates daily

    It is imperative that one start each day anew, with a calm spirit and clean slates for all your learners. This is not the easiest feat to accomplish – and I suspect it takes enormous emotional reserves to maintain such an attitude. The longer one remains in Education, the tougher it seems to get…

    “May you never be jaded.”

    This morning didn’t start off all too well on a personal level. (I won’t bore you with the details.) It follows that when a notorious class walked in for the first period, I wasn’t exactly a picture of peace. Seeing one or two of the learners that got my goose yesterday didn’t help my mood much either.
    Then one of them melted my heart with a sincere question and a hopeful expression:

    “When will you teach us again, sir?”

    May that moment stay with me forever, for it shook me out of my own hazardous thoughts and showed me a glimpse of the soul underneath the protective layers of a “problem” learner. There are genuine, vulnerable children inside the armored veneers of the upstarts and trouble-makers. When one opens up to you, you can’t help but realize how difficult and rare such acts of vulnerability truly are.

    I might not have understood that child completely, but I was humbled. Touched. And terrified of making the wrong move! I realized that the smallest hint of nonchalance or apathy would wound the boy and destroy any possibility of connecting with him. So I smiled appreciatively and explained my Life Orientation timetable to him. His class wouldn’t see me for English again, but that didn’t mean that I did not want to teach them.

    Thinking back, I realize that my own armored veneer sometimes leaps back in unguarded moments. Little chuckles of nonchalance.
    Subconscious eye-rolls.
    Sharp words.

    This is not an easy course I’ve chosen, and I will have to check myself regularly.

  • Blues

    Today, I was tested. Standing in for a Math teacher wasn’t the issue, as she had neatly set out all the work for each period on her desk. All I had to do was hand out the work/tests and let them get on with it. So no, on the actual content side there was no issue.

    In truth, it was only one kid that brought me to the doors of despair. There are some impenetrable kids, walking crows-nests of hurt and anger, that just won’t consider their peers. It’s not about refusing to conform – I get that. And it’s not questioning of the Status Quo – I get that too.
    It’s the vortex of chaos inside their minds that wrongs themselves even further – as well as those around them. A couple of periods over 7 weeks are not enough to get to the core of their dissociation. There’s nowhere near sufficient time to help them out of that misery.
    All I can do, really, is become a vivid memory of a safe place. Or loose my sh!t completely, forget about all this bleeding-heart nonsense and have them live in fear of my anger!
    *sigh* I’m sure there’s a balance to be found here. I’ll just have to keep on keepin’ on.

  • Another week in the wall

    Teaching, grading, learning and living in and through all the different subjects, aspects and levels of schooling is quite all-encompassing. This realm I’m in has all the potential in the world to BECOME the world. This is something I must never allow to happen, for if it does I will become irrelevant and useless as an educator. There is – and should be life beyond the classroom!

    Life beyond the classroom. That is after all why I want to teach, and what I want to teach to. That is why communities entrust their children to us. Life beyond the classroom is exactly why the classroom exists.

    We need to remember that education is about preparing children to live full, self-realized lives in the vast realm of possibility that is life in the outside world. Our purpose is to nurture independent, strong and healthy individuals who are able to think and act for themselves. We should be cracking open the boundaries that keep us from reaching our full potential – and we should definitely not build ever stronger, ever more constricting barriers, boxes or cells… because

    we don’t need that kind of education!