Compostable Kate

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 ...

I have a task for one of my classes to draw a leaf, and write inside it my favourite poem, book and movie. Drawing the leaf itself was the easy part, although I think it's barely recognisable as a leaf! What is really difficult is choosing just one title from each category. In our very first tutorial, as a get-to-know-you exercise, we were asked to introduce ourselves and tell everyone our favourite book. Not one of us could narrow it down to just one book, so each gave a few examples of what we like to read. To select just one book, I have to think of it as a Desert Island book. If I was stranded on a desert island, and could only have one book for company, what would take? My answer: Laura Ingalls Wilders' "The Long Winter." It's an amazing story of her family's survival through a seven-month blizzard, stranded in their tiny frontier town.  It affected me deeply when I read it, and it still affects me each time I re-read it. I think that, even more tha...