Day 3

Wednesday 17 Oct.... it was day that was considered as alright, despite the constant pressure to do well in lesson planning and controlling the students and their behaviour and work ethics......

I had 3 classes that day, with a Year 11 IT double lesson in the first two lessons and then Year 8 S&E Lesson 5 and then straight after it's year 9 S&E Lesson 6.

In our school, we've only got 6 lessons in a day, starting from 8:30-8:45am as home group, and Lesson 1 starting at 8:45 and Lesson 6 ending at 3:05pm.

The Year 11 IT class was alright; I was still getting the hang of talking so much and explaining this and that. It wasn't so bad with the Year 11s, as the group of students i have do IT as an elective, something they want to do so that gives them the motivation to do the subject. They are pretty self motivated with a little nudge from me in the right direction and that sets them to the right direction in finishing their assignments.

They are doing a VET course and that is Digital Imaging. Pretty much the whole 5 weeks unit of work are set out by the TAFE; from notes to assignments every week.

What I did was introduce them the assgn last lesson and so in this double lesson, I explained more about what they need to do.

In between classes, I'm just doing my planning, as I felt very stressed out when my mentor says this is not relevant or suggests something else or says they want their students to do this and that (and hence, not my stuff). Mind you I have 3 mentors; as i have 3 classes: Year 8 S&E, Year 9 S&E and Year 11 IT. All 3 have different teachers, so they are my mentors.

I am realising that my Year 8s are abit harder to control than my Year 9s and Year 11s. I like them; they are a nice bunch but when you have to teach them something and having a big bunch of 'em, they can get more than a handful. They like talking alot and so there's plenty of chatting in class when they should be listening to me. Even 5 minutes of instructions or paying attention, it's a hard hard thing for them to do.

Anyways, for this Year 8 class (straight after lunch), they really brought my mood down; i was feisty at the end of the lesson. Mainly probably because my mentor was away for that lesson so we had a relief teacher as well as having a student teacher (moi) teaching them AND it was just after lunch, which is probably the worst lesson in the day. They were all hyperactive and disobeying my instructions and disrupting the class.

Then after htat class, i went to my Yr 9 class. I have to say, I got them to copy down notes and did their first assessment task for Term 4. I got them to note take from their handouts and they were such a lovely class; they were so quiet most of the lesson, trying to complete their assessment and they are supposed to hand their workbooks up to me for me to mark. At the end of the lesson, all of them finished their note taking as their 1st assessment task. They were a lovely bunch; cos they managed to make me smile and brought my mood up. They weren't being funny or sarcastic, but it's probably just their innocence as kids and also because I made a mistake as well by saying that I will keep them in after lunch (when really what I wanted to say was I will keep them in for lunch - as a form of consequence if they misbehave). But they caught on to what I said and I only realised what I've just said wrongly, so i was laughing as well as them laughing as well. That was one thing among other things as well that they made me smile. They just have that positive look on their face which i really like. No matter how dull or serious i look, they are still a chirpy happy bunch, esp the guys.

So at the end of that day, it ended well, despite i had a bad day in between. So that was good.