The First Full Week

Hello all!

I case any of you had any doubt, I am still alive and well!!  This week was so insane.  I do not have time to get into every little detail but basically adjusting to:

-A new school system (with millions of new acronyms, new curriculum and new assessment types/levels)

-A program that is fairly new to the school and always being further developed (a project based learning Middle Years Program)

-A new school (with different sanctions and operations and that I still don’t fully know my way around)

-New students (who are about 4-5 years younger than the students I am used to teaching)

-New staff (who are all lovely but there are lots of new names/positions to get to know)

-Teaching new subjects that I have not taught before (mainly Maths and a Literacy intervention course that incorporates geography)

AND

-The new experience of being an actual teacher with my own classes in general…

all combined made me feel like I was frantically running around without a spare minute to take a breath all week.

HOWEVER, I have not for a second regretting taking the position which makes things easier.  God has given me the endurance, energy and peace that I have needed which I am infinitely grateful for.

One of my major stresses coming into this week was that I have to teach a Year 7 Maths class three times a fortnight. However, I learned that one of the teachers from the Maths department has the same class twice a fortnight so I have a good amount of support and the kids can ask him any difficult questions if I ever get confused.  He and I met to plan my first three lessons last week and we have been catching up after school to talk about how each class went.

I always have at least one teaching assistant in with that class which is really helpful since there are several students with Special Educational/behavioural needs.  I have taught them twice so far and I am feeling more confident about the whole thing now but I was pretty apprehensive to begin with!!  It is only a class of 21 and they are students that struggle more in Math so the lessons are differentiated to be more basic than the ones that some of the students in the year will get.  I am sure that the concepts will not be too difficult but teaching styles and methods in Math are very different from those in the Arts and Humanities so I am still learning about what works.

Another big stress in my week was my Year 9 Literacy intervention class.  I have them twice a week for a one hour lesson and they are the only students that I teach who are not Year 7s.  I had been given some resources by the lady who had taught the class before but a lot of the things that she had given me these students had done in other classes.  Since they are the thirteen students in the year with the most need for extra literacy help I think last year teacher must have pooled resources a bit too much, which left me with a bunch of lessons and assignments that they had already done. To make matters worse, the lady who had taught the class in the past fell on her way to work on Monday and cracked her head open and broke her arm so she has been away from school recovering from that accident. 

Thankfully, the teacher who has been taking on some of her duties over the course of this week helped me to develop a plan for this half term since he teaches history to the same students and has taught them in previous years as well.  We ended up designing a unit on Canada and I will incorporate basic literacy-based activities into each lesson with a final project at the end which they have to complete on one province or territory.  During our second lesson together this past week I introduced the topic and the students seemed quite enthusiastic, it will just be a matter of getting these reluctant learners to complete the tasks that I set out for them and to stay focussed in class.  They are going to be a challenge since their needs are so diverse but I have talked to several teachers who know them well and have taught them in the past and I will continue to get advice from them about what strategies work for each student.  Since Special Education and Literacy are my top two teaching-subject passions and are what I have trained for most in my journey to become a teacher I think this class is going to be a positive albeit exhausting challenge.

My regular of Year 7 students are very enthusiastic, but at this age (the equivalent of Grade 6 in Canada) they are also very much in need of my approval which is something that I am not used to having worked with older teenagers during most of my teaching experience.  They constantly want to know if their writing looks neat, if their ideas are good, if their drawing looks nice and if they are following my instructions to the letter.  It makes me feel like they need me and appreciate my opinion but it is also drives me a bit crazy at times since they are so worried about doing things the “right” way and all seem to seek individual attention from me at the same time.  They are so sweet and cute though.  There is only one student who has been quite an issue behaviour-wise but I genuinely think he will come around eventually based on the interactions we have had since school started (disciplinary and otherwise).  I just have to keep my management of his behaviour consistent and to continue to communicate the fact that I want him to do better and believe that he can. 

We got the Year 7s started into their projects this week for Science, Tech (both food and design), Numeracy, Literacy, Art and Humanities.  Each of the projects falls under either the theme of “How would my life be different if I lived in Japan?” or “What makes a hero?” and the themes and projects will switch every half-term.  Teaching all of these different subjects is stretching me but I just keep reminding myself that if I was teaching Grade 7 or 8 in Canada I would be teaching the same subjects but without all of the support that I get from the subject specialists in this program and from my teaching team. 

The big event this week will be the “Open Evening” on Wednesday during which prospective students/parents in Years 5 and 6 come to tour the school and see what we do.  It is a promotion strategy since we are an academy and we have all been trying to organize our rooms and get bulletin boards together so that all of our displays look attractive and relevant.  The actual night will not be stressful since I will just be in my room talking with people who wander in, but I do still have some organizing to do in my room since the lady who taught in there before me left a bunch of stuff that I have not fully sorted through yet, considering the fact that I was hired so late and I did not have time to work on my room before the first week of school. 

The next big thing that I will have to be thinking about now is assessing where students are at in each subject and beginning to track their progress.  The achievement levels and criteria are different here so I will gradually be learning what numbers and letters look like in practice with the help of the other teacher in my department.  These assessments will inform how we will differentiate instruction for students, especially in core subjects and will lead up to half term reports. 

There will always be new things to learn but as I get a handle on more and more of the little things then I will continue to feel less and less lost.  For now I am holding on to the fact that my colleagues never fail to be eager to help me and to offer to assist me with any needs that I have and that my kids really seem to like me.  I still feel like I bit of a novelty in the school and the students in all different years want to ask me what it is like in Canada and to hear my accent which they seem to think is the coolest thing ever (which seems so funny to me!).  These are the kinds of things that break up my frantic moments and make my days more enjoyable.

The community at my church continues to be a massive blessing to me.  Specifically this week I went to the first evening in a five-week Newcomers dinner/Bible study at the home of a couple in the church which was so refreshing after a crazy Monday!  There were 11 of us who were new to the church from all different places and backgrounds and it was so lovely to get a chance to connect.  We were made to feel so welcome in the home where we met and it was just an all-around lovely time.  I am looking forward to week two tomorrow night!!

Also I went to pudding and pyjama party with a bunch of girls from the church last night and got to meet some more people which was just what I needed after the week I had.  We ended up watching Tangled which of course made me super happy (and made me want to watch the whole series of Chuck, as listening to Zach Levi`s voice always does).  Disney is always a winner with me!

That’s all I have time to write about for now, but I hope that your curiosity has been sufficiently satisfied!

-Heather <3