Reflections from an (Almost) Teacher.

Thursday & Friday

Thursday went much better than I expected. I had everything together for my day with my male mentor (D), planned out and ready for anything. Was able to record some great observations of the students doing maths, and picked up some great teaching strategies from D. Taught some lessons that with D there for a bit, away for a bit, and I just felt fairly comfortable for most of the day. 

Friday went less well. D taught maths again so I could observe, and it was great. There were a number of times though where he’d expected me to have done something, and I hadn’t (whether because I’d never seen it done before/I didn’t know I had to do it/I’d taken advice from someone else…) and he seemed disappointed. He gave me feedback from the day before, which was positive. As it was, it almost seemed as though I’d have no time to do my lesson finishing some work from the previous day, but as sport was cancelled, D suddenly handed the class over to me. Caught off-guard, I stumbled my way through a not-at-all-thought-out lesson on writing the body of a newspaper story. I felt like I did a terrible job, though the work that students produced was really very good. I feel like I get so nervous around D, he seems to always catch me on the incredibly rare occasions I do something stupid… or maybe I just do something stupid because I’m so nervous. I realised that day that I do not perform well. I really don’t. I never have. I always screw up, and I don’t know how to counter that. 

Some advice D gave me on Friday is something that will always stick with me - we as teachers, are there for the kids. We do everything for them. Not for us, for them. It’s hard to get out of the mind frame that ‘we know better, do what we say’ and start thinking about what the kids need over our own sense of what is more convenient. 

There is such a fine line, such a perfect balance, that I still can’t get my head around. 

2 weeks + 2 days left :)