It is now the end of week 10 and I'm not as exhausted as I thought I would be. While planning and keeping up enthusiasm was hard at the start it has now become the norm.I will miss my classes; my year 7's kept me energised, my year 8's kept me trying new things and my year 10's are increasied my content knowledge. The things that I thought I would struggle with now seen insignificant. I think my problem in the first few weeks was the expectations that I had on myself. I expected every lesson to be 100% perfect which really isn't realistic. I have learnt that even the most experienced teachers can have horrible days where nothing seems to work and students are not focussed so for me to expect perfection from myself is impossible.
In terms of achieving my goals, I feel pretty happy.
•I have used technology in the classroom.Blogging with year ten and my biggest achievement of filming and editing films with year 8. The students were so involved, and after looking at their assessment tasks, got a lot out of it.
• I learnt a lot about how my students learnt and the level of difficulty these tasks need to be (Element 1). Year 7 learnt a lot from repeated activities and by playing games to remember, like poetry bingo. Year 10 learnt best from each other so group work and self directed learning worked best.
• I am keen to try new classroom management techniques, while doing shorter pracs and casual teaching it is really hard to maintain a consitent classroom management strategy, so I would like to try building upon my own strategies (Element 5). For me, the best way to do this will be to build a rapport with my students based on trust and mutual respect. I will also try to be available for my students to ask questions at any time. A way of doing this will be thanks to technology and blogging. Another way I think my classroom management will improve is by implementing enjoyable and engaging activities. If students are engaged and enjoy their tasks classroom management is easier to establish.
• My timing has improved dramatically. The investment in a watch has helped a lot.
• I was lucky enough to participate in extra- curricular activities, from after school learning centre and sporting teams, to year 9 camp. (Element 7).
• In terms of keeping my sanity, I am happy to say I succeeded. I did not have to stay up late planning lessons or have terrible classroom experiences. While I would like to say that it was all down to my organization skills, the supportive school environment and having wonderful classes definitely helped.
One goal that I haven’t mentioned yet is in regards to classroom management. It would be unrealistic to say that classroom management was an area that I perfected in ten weeks but I definitely learnt a lot about teacher student relationships and the strategies that work best for me. I am looking forward to trying new strategies in my first few years of teaching, but so far I feel confident to manage a classroom effectively.
Overall, my internship was a very positive experience and I learnt a lot from my colleagues and students. I feel positive about my future teaching career.
