What I learned on prac.

I'm pretty sure that I learned far more on my prac than the students I was teaching. Some of it will stand me in good stead for my next prac, and for when I am a fully-qualified teacher. Some of it was very disappointing and disallusioning.

One of the first things I learned was that my supervising teacher no longer wanted to be a teacher, but was sticking with it for a few more years, while her youngest child finishes high school. Another teacher in our staff room was only staying with teaching to boost his superannuation before he retired. Yet another teacher didn't speak to me during my four weeks sitting at the desk next to him, and seemed to dislike all students and the teaching of them. There were frequent discussions in there about students being "not very bright" and "unteachable", including one entire year. No effort was put in to teaching these students, as it was deemed to be a waste of effort.

However, imaginative teaching was hampered by the Head of Department's (HOD) micromanaging of all unit plans, which, at least in the case of the Year 10 SOSE¹ class I taught, ensured that the subject matter was kept as dull as possible, and the teaching methods limited to writing things on the whiteboard for the students to write down into workbooks.

The school did have a course of professional development (PD) for preservice teachers (student/prac teachers), which included information on their preferred teaching strategy, "Dimensions of Learning" (DOL). This placed great emphasis on teaching the students to think for themselves, and also to behave appropriately, and take responsibility for themselves and their actions.

When I brought up the subject of DOL, and teaching students to think with regards to the year 10s, I was told not to bother trying to get them to think, as it was now "too late" for them. I could possibly try it with the Year 9 Extension English I was teaching, but this group of "not very bright" Year 10 students was beyond hope. However, if they're all being taught in a very dull, unimaginitive way, by teachers who put no effort into teaching them, I don't think it's surprising that the students are not engaging, let alone excelling.

I found that many of the students were actually very bright, but bored witless. One girl, who I knew to be articulate and knowlegeable, spent one 70-minute lesson doing nothing but writing "this is booooooring" in her workbook. I sympathised with her, but it wasn't in my power to make it any less boring. Unfortunately for this student (and the three others who didn't write anything that lesson), my supervising teacher reported them for "not participating".

I found that attempting to motivate unmotivated students was exceptionally difficult. The Year 10 SOSE class had absolutely no intrinsic motiviation, and I struggled to find any extrinsic motivation for them. I was told that none of them wanted to do SOSE next year, and therefore, their interest was zero. They feel no need to work on something just for the sake of learning something new or doing a good job. If they get no immediate use or enjoyment out of it, it holds no interest and they largely refuse to participate in any meaningful way.

My supervising teacher dissuaded me from trying to do anything but dictate information for them to enter into their workbooks. This particular class was deemed too disruptive and easily distracted to attempt any group work, or anything other than sitting down and copying information from the board into their books (and sometimes they didn't even do that). I did get them to do a couple of small writing tasks, but that was about it, outside of the workbooks. My teacher also felt that doing group work with a class like that would be an attempt at "winning over" the students, and that the students would respond to it by laughing at the teacher, and losing all respect for him/her.

If I was writing a unit/lesson plan on this for uni, it would include all kinds of collaborative learning activities, and of course no pure transmission of info. Real life was completely different.

I have learned that it's very difficult to learn the names of all the students in each class. After four weeks of teaching them, I still didn't know all their names, and I feel it as a particular failure on my part. However, in the pre-service teachers' PD during my last week, I was given an excellent technique for not only learning all of their names very quickly, but also how to manage some of their classroom behaviour. By bringing the students into the class slowly, and arranging them in alphabetical order around the class, some groups and cliques will be separated, and having them keep the same seats for all classes, I will be able to practice their names in order. I also know that I can request a class roll, so that I have a list of the students' names on hand. I will definitely be doing this in my next prac.

I will also ask to have all the "special needs" students identified to me, so that I can be prepared to meet their needs. I was three weeks into teaching the Year 10s when I found out that there were at least three students with some degree of ASD.

In this prac, I didn't feel that I could take up time in the first lesson of each class to set ground rules and discuss my class rules, but I have since been advised that it's strongly advised that we do that, and if our supervising teacher isn't supportive of this, to discuss it with the prac co-ordinator. Before my next prac I will have devised my own set of class guidelines, and have them printed and ready to go up on the walls in the class rooms that I am using.

In the class rooms themselves, I had a difficult time getting around the room, and being able to access all of the students. On the one occasion I moved the desks (for group work), my supervising teacher afterwards told me that I shouldn't ask the students to help me, and that it takes too long to move and then move back the furniture, so it's not really practical. I had to make to with the arrangements of the rooms, despite the difficulties it presented, as the HOD was unwilling to have the desks rearranged. It was pointed out as being a barrier to my being a classroom teacher, as it seemed that rearranging the desks for my ease of access was an unreasonable burden to place on the other teachers who had to use those classrooms. My supervising teacher also said that being unable to "stand over" the students would make disciplining miscreants impossible. However, even if I could stand over a student, that's not how I would manage misbehaviour.

I actually had few behavioural problems, other that distraction and talking; certainly nothing that required anything more than a firm word. I was impressed with how readily the Year 10s agreed to stop using certain words in the classroom, and accepted my explanations for why the word was unacceptable to me.

Other than the logistics of getting around the school, to and from the classes, and around the classrooms themselves, the hardest part for me has been finding the right academic level for the class. I don't want to patronise the students, or try to teach them something they already know, but I don't want to go over their heads, either. I find that I have little idea how much Year 9s should already know, and had no idea of what they had already done in the year. On my next placement, I will find out what their previous units have been, and try to see some of their work, in order to guage the level that they are working at.

I definitely had some successes. My Year 9 English unit on Whale Rider was great, and the students were all able to write some good pieces about it, and I even managed to bring in a reference to wheelchair rugby. If I had been there another week I would have shown them a video of the Wheel Blacks, the NZ wheelchair rugby team, doing their Haka.

The "not very bright", "unteachable" Year 10s did – in spite of themselves – pick up some knowledge about Africa and its hunger problems, and what Live8 was about, what the G8 summit was, and who Nelson Mandela was. When the most troublesome boy in the class called out "G8" and then listed the eight countries, I felt like cheering!

Overall, I have learned that I can do this, despite the restrictions from school rules, micro-managing HODs, pre-set unit plans and ultra-conservative school values. I feel that if I'd had longer with the 10s and could have been a bit more flexible and hands-on, I might have had better results. I have certainly continued thinking of ways that I could have worked with that material in a more interesting way, and what I might have done to work out why certain students wouldn't participate, or were disruptive.

I have learned that I can bounce back from bad days and recover lost ground. I must persevere through the hard parts, because it's worth the effort. Most importantly, I learned that I really, really want to be a high school teacher, despite the challenges, and not pursue "other options" that were constantly recommended to me throughout my prac.

1Study of Society and the Environment