absolutwillie

Category: Studying

  • 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!

  • Life Orientation: Required but not Respected

    Something that struck me right on the noggin today was how utterly neglected the school subject of Life Orientation was, despite its incredible importance. Yes, it is true that the subject is one of a select few that all students are required to take – but that is about as much attention as it gets. While passing the subject is required to complete one’s secondary schooling, grades earned in it are not included in any tertiary admission criteria in South Africa. On the contrary – those grades are actually subtracted from one’s final grade point average before tertiary admission is considered!

    No wonder learners have little interest in Life Orientation during the FET-phase. It also doesn’t take a genius to figure out why LO is considered “the subject Schools assign to teachers when they don’t know what to do with those teachers”.

    School in its entirety should prepare one for adult life, this is true. That being said, no other class in school creates the safe space which allows for the discussion of supra-curricular life questions faced by learners, as LO does. Nowhere else are learners given the sense of security and support to talk about anything they are facing, dealing or struggling with. Life Orientation is the class that helps us discover what it means to be who we are; it teaches us life- and business skills; it fosters both individual and communal wellness; it encourages independent thought; it humanizes both the curriculum and the scary meta-curricular web of the wide world waiting outside.

    Life Orientation has the potential to heal, enable, activate and give wings to the most powerful citizens of the world! Why should it not be treated that way?

  • Snow and rainbows

    Today showed me how very differently one class could respond to a particular L.O. lesson than another. Where the Gr.X C-class nearly yawned the class into Oz, the A- and E-classes loved every detail! Where the first class was decidedly bored out of their skulls the moment they walked in the door – the other classes snapped out of it the moment I started the lesson. They enjoyed what I had prepared for them, and participated to such an extent that the lesson felt less like a class and more like a lively discussion among friends. It was amazing.

    Your preparation as well as the kids make all the difference. The classes who put something of themselves into the lesson, got something more in return. This mix of energy allowed me to pour my whole self into the moment and emerge with my learners, energized and ready to move on at the end of the period (which flew by in no time).

    I have yet to figure out why the first class differed so greatly from the other two, and what I could do to bring their spark out in the former group.

    …

    After school I went to buy my colleague a milkshake for his birthday (which he didn’t want celebrated elaborately). Three of us jumped in a car, drove in the icy rain to the mall, and celebrated with sweets while surrounded by snow capped mountains. From the pay-point, I took the following photograph:

    All was right with the world.

    I also made him this little video as a birthday present :0)

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V8DpEi_33Y?version=3&f=user_uploads&c=google-webdrive-0&app=youtube_gdata&w=320&h=266]

  • Shades of productivity

    Today I was Mr. Of Alltrades. Jack of Alltrades.
    From revisions-master, to career advisor. Project consultant. Matric Exam Invigilator. Paper grader. Student. Manager. Job seeker…

    Grading papers for a subject outside one’s own field of expertise is pretty daunting! It is also a great eye-opener as far as external examinations are concerned: I always tell learners that they have to write their answers as if the examiner has no clue what they’re on about. Now I can substantiate my reasoning with real-world experience that affects them directly! (Not that I’m a novice to the subject – I just don’t teach it.)

  • A dancing bear I am

    Great news! I managed to find a fun poem to use in my Poetry 4 Enjoyment class:

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-2o9xmFw8g?si=x0q2x-Pf3DFkyV3G]

    I presented the lesson to two different Gr.11 EFAL classes, as well as my Visual Literacy lesson on Poster Design. That completed the circle – I have now done my song-and-dance for all five Gr.11 EFAL classes at our school.

    It was interesting to note how many learners reacted positively to my lessons, and to see which of them knocked my socks off with their Prepared Reading assignments after! I must admit that I am especially keen to see what the learners from today’s lessons bring to class on Monday!

    Poetry remains one of my main passions in teaching.