Lovely Things

I finally got my Erin Condren teacher's planner the other day. I love the way it was packaged, with this cute little sticker on top:

This is a sample of what some of the pages look like:

It even came with a little freebie- cute notecards!



In other news, I've finally got all of my fabric and sewing stuff organised!

I love polka dot fabric!



Other cute fabrics I found when cleaning out my study/music/craft room:

Stationery and cute fabrics make me so happy!

Teaching affirmation

Yesterday I got the most lovely email from a parent whose son I teach in my Maths class. I had called her concerned about her son's attitude towards Maths, not because he was exhibiting any negative behaviours, but because he had seemed to have lost his love and enthusiasm for Maths, in such a quick period of time.

We met that afternoon in my classroom for an informal meeting, and it turned out he was just having a few "off" days because his friend was not at school. I had such a nice conversation with both the boy and his mother, who was so affirming and encouraging. His mum said such nice things about my teaching style and how I was her son's favourite teacher, and then followed up with an email the next day discussing the conversation she had with her son after they came to see me.

She ended the email with "So, once again, I would like to thank you very much for all the wonderful work you have done and also for your time, enthusiasm, patience and outstanding professionalism as a teacher, towards our son. I hope that you are here at this school for many more years to come, because the students here are very lucky to have such an amazing & caring person guiding them through their school years."

But that wasn't my favourite part- even though it was very sweet.

This was the kicker:

"I would like to share with you these appropriate quotes:

· The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. ~William A. Ward (her emphasis)

· The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book. ~ Anonymous "

What I've Been Up To

It's been a LONG time since I've updated this little blog... it's been a little neglected because life has gotten in the way!

So... what's been taking up all my time?


Thirty one children, seven hours a day, five days a week

:)


Teaching has become my number one time consumer. I go to sleep thinking about lesson plans and wake up thinking about seating charts... not to mention reports, assessments, calling parents, assemblies, competitions, school dances, awards, notes home, projects, extension groups, photocopying, grades, discipline.

To give you an idea of how full on this whole teaching thing is, let me paint you a picture of what's been happening in our school community lately.

#1 : Reports had to be finished and proof read this week. This means constant checking of grades, comments, and general ticking-of-boxes, with lots of last minute changes that add to the already immensely high stress levels. Let's just say that I now have a renewed appreciation for all of my teachers who spent hours working on MY school reports! I had no idea about the amount of work that goes into them. Every i must be dotted and every t crossed. And every comma must be in the right place! Teachers are grammar and punctuation aficionados!


On top of reports being due, we have also had to find time for:
yearly exams (and the tonne of marking, grading and ranking that comes with them!)
the handball competition
the school disco
award ceremonies

You can see why I've been a little distracted! Lots has been going on... and in the middle of it, I'm trying to secure myself a job for next year, seeing as I'm only filling in for a teacher who's been on maternity leave. Trying to find the time to start filling out job applications whilst in the midst of the craziness of what is Term 4 is a little difficult!

Not knowing if I'll even be employed next year is even scarier!

I had this whole plan about how my teaching career would start, and this has not exactly been how I thought it would go... But, it has been great experience and a HUGE learning curve.

I have learnt to be tough, and stick to my guns. I've learnt how to (almost) control a classroom of thirty-one rambunctious ten year olds. I've learnt how to be caring and strict at the same time.

It's been one huge rollercoaster ride... a baptism of fire, if you will.

Not what I expected, or how I imagined my first year of teaching to be. Not better or worse than what I thought, just... different.


There have been awesome days and there have been days that really sucked.

There have been moments I've laughed and moments I've cried.

Days I've smiled and days I've yelled.

Days that I've been on Cloud 9 and days that I've gotten more angry than I ever have before.

Days where I have taken the frustration home with me.

Days where I've been disappointed, and anxious, and sad, and joyful, and ecstatic all within the same seven-hour period.

Days where I've felt uplifted and days where I've felt downtrodden.


I'm told this is life in the adult world. After so many years of being a student and feeling like a kid despite being twenty-something, it's strange. And I think it'll take some getting used to.

Graduation 2.0

At my graduation ceremony for my Masters of Primary Teaching:

School Holidays

School holidays started this week. After 3 weeks of teaching full time, I was more than ready for them!

(Which makes me wonder how I'm going to be after teaching a whole TERM of nine weeks straight?)

Although we have three weeks of holidays, it's not all about time off for us teachers. We have to program for the next term. That basically means we have to write a timetable for all the day's activities for the next nine weeks of school- English, Maths, Science, HSIE, PD/H/PE & Creative Arts.

In case you didn't pick up on it, this is a TON of work and takes a lot of time.

This is what a completed program looks like (and this is just one term's worth of programming for English and Maths only!)

A program basically looks like this- all the activities and lessons for the week, divided into days.

And every day, I have to sign off on what was completed by the class.

This helps keep you accountable for what you teach, and helps you stay on track throughout the term. You usually have to submit your program to the Stage Coordinator a few weeks into the term to get approved.

For now, I'm in the trenches :)
I'm slogging my way through writing my first very own program for my very own class.

If it wasn't so much work, I'd almost be excited!

A Look Inside a Kindergarten Classroom

Curious to see what a real kindergarten classroom looks like?

Let me show you!

This is not my classroom, but it is the classroom that I'm in for my four week block of prac.




Because it's a kindergarten room, it's very colourful, with lots of the kids' work up on the walls.


I could bore you with a whole lot of talk about how research has found that classrooms where the kids' work is up on display leads to a more engaged class with higher success rates in learning...





I could also tell you that the Creative Arts (music, dance, drama and visual arts) have been found to correlate with success more so than either academia, sports or community involvement. All the more reason for letting your kids be creative and put up their art in the classroom!

So of course there's lots of artwork up in the room!



And my own creation... You always have to make a prototype to show the kids how to do it!

We made these animal habitats on paper a few days ago- the green one is a lilypad, the pink one is a nest and the red one is a tree!

We've also been doing some work on Japan - here are the koi fish the kids made with me!



Naturally, we do a lot of counting. Here's our counting by tens caterpillar!



These Rainbow Fish we made after reading the Rainbow Fish story book.

A Week on Prac

This past week I've been on prac at a local school every day!


It's my last prac before officially becoming a proper teacher in June, so I'm soaking up every minute of it (hence the lack of attention paid to this blog recently!)


I have a Kindergarten class, and they are so fun to plan lessons for... although catering to the needs of 22 different children who have only just come out of pre-school six weeks ago has it's challenges.


For one of our assignments, we had to create a lesson that qualified as a multi-engaging experience- meaning that it held the kids' interest and addressed outcomes from multiple subject areas.


I chose to plan a Maths lesson with Science and Creative Arts elements as well. After observing the class on Monday and Tuesday, I felt I was ready to start teaching on Wednesday (actually, I was itching to get started by then!)


The first part of the lesson was yesterday morning. I chose something fun and exciting for the kids to learn with- Jellybeans!





First we traced around our hands, and then we covered the surface area with jellybeans!







Then we traced around the jellybeans




and coloured them in so we could see how many jellybeans fit inside each hand print!


We then sorted the jellybeans into colours and made a bar graph depicting the number of each different colour jellybean!


Then we ranked each colour jellybean from least to most, on a scale using rope and paperclips!


It was so fun, and the kids were really engaged! Success!

Why Do We Need School

Saw this on Facebook- you have to laugh at it, even if the whole thing might be enough to do me out of a job when I finally become a proper teacher!

Why Do We Need School

Music: We have YouTube for that.
Sport: I have a Wii.
Languages: I watch Dora the Explorer.
English: Everything is shortened anyway (LOL, BRB).
Maths: That's why we have calculators.
Geography: I'll buy a globe (or use NavMan).
Drama: That's why I watch The Bold & The Beautiful.
History: They're all dead anyway!

Luckily I have a kindergarten class for my latest prac at school, and being so early in the year, they can't read yet... otherwise if they saw this, they might not turn up next week ;)

Reflecting on Teaching

We had to answer this questionnaire about reflecting on our teaching after our last week of prac at school, and I thought I'd post it on here, so you could see what I've learnt whilst being a teacher for 3 weeks!


What I consider the 3 most important things I've learnt:
1. Don't be afraid to change something if you realise it's not working in the middle of a lesson.
2. Positively reinforcing students who are doing the right thing usually has the added benefit of detering students who aren't, and is far more pleasant than always dealing out punishment.
3. Being excited about a lesson usually makes the kids excited and engaged too.

What I consider the 3 most challenging things I'll face during my next prac:
1. Timing of lessons. In PP1 I would often go overtime with my lessons without realising it.
2. Planning for a new grade, now that I've gotten used to Year 2.
3. What to do if I don't have a Smartboard! I've gotten so used to using this as a resource to engage the students that I'll be really sad if my next class doesn't have one!

What surprised me:
How much I was influenced by my supervising teacher's teaching style. Without consciously realising it, for the majority of the time I was in 2J I imitated the way he taught the class, following his rewards and discipline systems and the way he organised the classroom, even when I was teaching full day lessons.

What the strengths of a positive relationship between the school and the community are:
It makes the whole process of communicating with parents and the community easier. Because my supervising teacher was the Assistant Principal for K-2, I saw how he dealt with calling parents abut behaviour or discipline issues, and it was always a lot easier if a positive relationship already existed.

The most important connections I've made betwen the theoretical and its application:
Behaviourism has its place, with punishment and reinforcement, but so does Humanism, and creating a warm and supportive environment for the students each day.

Questions I still have:
How do teachers find time for everything? Between the lesson planning, teaching, school events, discipline issues, dealing with parents, etc, it just seems like there's never enough time in the day for everything in the timetable! How do they ensure their students learn everything they need to in a year with all of the interruptions and scheduling changes that take away from class learning time?

What I've learnt about myself as a future teacher:
I enjoy letting the students have fun while learning. However I also learnt that you still have to remain an authoritive figure, and I think I found a good way of balancing this in the classroom.

What I've learnt about myself as a person:
I learnt that I am definitely heading towards the right career! I just had such a great time on prac, looking forward to seeing the students every day. All the elements of my personality just seemed to be a good fit for teaching, which is what I always assumed, but it was nice to have it confirmed.

How what I learnt and discovered will influence my future actions:
I learnt that students like having something tangible to learn from, whether this be a video or a song or concrete materials that they can engage with, and I will endeavour to include this in future lessons.

3 things I hope to improve about my teaching practice in PP2:
1. Develop a more consistent method of gaining students' attention, now that I have had the opportunity to try out so many (eg. hand claps, hands on head, ringing a bell, etc).
2. Continue to develop my knowledge and use of Smartboards and associated technology.
3. Investigate students' prior knowledge in more depth before launching into a lesson.

Lessons

Being a teacher (or student teacher for that matter!) is a funny paradox- on one hand you are planning lessons and teaching the kids in your class everything they need to know. On the other hand, the kids themselves are constantly teaching YOU things, and you are learning things about yourself that you never knew before.

What 3 single day visits and a full week of being on prac have taught me includes:

- never try to assume what kids will do. Sometimes they will have no idea what you're talking about, and other times they'll blow you away with their creativity and insightfulness.

- be prepared for sweetness (eg. being brought a handmade cinnamon scroll) and the complete opposite (eg. a child slamming their fists on the desk when you correct one tiny thing)

- lecturers know their stuff, there really can be seven years difference in ability within the one class.

- similarly, you as a teacher really need to know your stuff, because if you're teaching it, you better believe the kids will ask you every type of question about it.

- nothing goes to plan. It's a miracle if it does.

- the school day is full of interruptions. Just when you get started, you're almost inevitably distracted.

- you can go into a class with all sorts of expectations, and some kids will meet them, some kids will go above and beyond and some kids won't at all. But not for a lack of enthusiasm.

- be nice to the kids and they'll (usually) be nice back.

- you're only as good of a teacher as the relationship you have with the students.

- teaching is a team sport. Other teachers are your assistant coaches.

- contrary to popular belief, the school day DOES NOT end at 3 o'clock when the bell rings. At least not for the teacher, anyway!

- it's impossible to get everything right, but you keep on trying.

What I Wore

Dressing as a teacher is hard work- you've got to find the right mix of corporate, casual and comfortable. Just for fun, when I was on prac last week, I took a photo of my outfit each day!
(Taking a full shot of yourself is hard! So take no notice of my lack of photography skills here!)

In no particular order, except the sequential days of the week, I present to you...

What I Wore On Prac

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday



Thursday


Friday

Stop the ride, I want to get off!

Sorry I've been so absent (again!)

Where were we?
Last time you heard from me, I was in the middle of the 40 Hour Famine. Well, I finished it! I thought hours 16-18 were tough at the time, but it was really hours 25-27 that nearly killed it for me. I ended up having to abandon the sleepover we had planned at school and go and sleep in my own bed. Sometimes you just need to, you know?

Anyway, I made it to Hour 40.

And then I celebrated by having a huge beef burger, chips and lemonade an hour later.

:)

Followed by Nutella and Peanut Butter flavoured gelato

:) :)

Is there any better way to break your 40 hour charity fast? I think not.


I totally meant to take photos of the weekend, but the hunger got to me and I forgot about anything else except my empty stomach. Although I did end up doing a lot of my Primary Maths & Numeracy assignment, which was a total bonus! We had "rooms" throughout the building which were dedicated to certain activities- the movie room, the games console (Xbox, PlayStation, Wii) room, the chill out room (complete with white noise machine) and yes, the study room for all of us dedicated uni students.

If we had to go without food, the least we could do was entertain ourselves throughout the process!


Anyway, I digress (again). That was two weekends ago. This past weekend was fabulous, full of fun and sunshine. I had just finished a crazy week at uni (all the Education students referred to it as 'The Week From Hell' because we had so many assessments due) that reached its peak when I came home on Thursday night only to discover that part of my Primary English & Literacy assignment, that I had done DAYS in advance, had simply.disappeared.vanished.gone.completely.



As you do, if you were a lowly Word document.



Needless to say, there was lots of frustration, venting and crying from yours truly, until I admitted to myself that I should probably start writing it all over again, seeing as it was due Friday night. The unfairness of it all still gets to me, and I shall never know whether my computer really did literally 'lose the plot' or if I just failed to save it.



(But wouldn't I have gotten a "Would you like to save message" when I closed the program? I'm a smart girl, I would have clicked "Yes". Unless the WFH - Week From Hell, had gotten to me so badly that I just clicked "No" in a valiant attempt at telling the world "Stop the ride, I want to get off!")



Writing that line just made me think of one of my favourite songs from the band MercyMe

"If it came to a stop, and someone let me off I know I would just get right back in line."



True. Very true.



Of course I survived the WFH, and promptly told my mum that I needed to spend Saturday with some kids. So I grabbed my godson and his sister, and took them to the Penrith Show for a few hours.



Sunshine + kids + carnival rides = JOY



And I felt all the more better for it. Pictures to come, of course.





Fast forward to this week, and I am currently one day into a week-long prac with my adopted Year 2 class. Today I taught my first ever whole class lesson and it was AWESOME! My lesson was on Maths (parallel lines) and I decided to make it fun and incorporate Visual Arts into it by getting the kids to draw parallel lines on a big A3 sheet of paper and then use diluted pain to brush over it, creating a crayon resist painting. I did show the class one I had "prepared earlier", but I let them do their own thing, and the results were fantastic!



2J is now the home of some multicoloured, stripey artworks that also happen to be rockin' some parallel lines.



And what's the point of teaching fun stuff like this if you can't do it yourself?

I present to you, my masterpiece:

Baking and Teaching

Tomorrow our Youth Group is holding special 'Girls Only' and 'Guys Only' nights for our kids that come along- the guys are going to play mini-golf, while the girls stay in and have a mocktails pyjama party! I have promised (as always) to bake cupcakes. Normally I bake the cupcakes the day before, and ice them the day of... well, tomorrow is Friday which means Youth Group, and have I baked anything? Nope.

I always use the Magnolia Bakery recipe for vanilla cupcakes, because I've had the opportunity to taste some from their NYC bakery and they are the best I've ever tasted.

What's even better is that they've compiled all the recipes they use at the bakery into a cookbook, and now even when I just bake them myself at home, you get fabulous cupcakes every time.

Hello... yum!



(Why does my icing never turn out like that?!)


Anyway, I digress. I'm sorry if I inadvertedly made you crave cupcakes.

What's been happening in my world? One word: STUDY

If it's not working on an assignment or project, it's lesson planning! Because finally, FINALLY, I am getting to go on prac (aka professional experience, aka Be a Student Teacher) and it is not without it's fair share of work.

I realise that I haven't mentioned much about my prac on here yet, so to summarise:

I have a Year 2 class with a male teacher who is also the assistant principal for the K-2 grades. He is very relaxed and laid back in his teaching style, and the kids seem to love him.

There are 22 kids in the class, which is pretty small by usual standards.

The ability range in this class alone is ASTOUNDING. We got told in our Prac lectures that it's possible to get a range of seven years in ability in a class, and I was all "Yeah right, seven years, as if!" but it's totally true. There is one girl in 2J who is reading and spelling words that a high school kid would struggle with (like germinate, scenery, rhubarb and chrysanthemum) and a boy who is below kindergarten level with his reading.

(I'll admit, I panicked when I first realised this, and thought "How in the world am I going to be able to develop lesson plans for this class?!")

I tried to fly under the radar at the school, being an ex-student and all, but a teacher (who I never even had as a class teacher) recognised me and before long it was "Oh, YOU'RE the ex-student!" everywhere I went.

All the prac students (there are 8 of us at this school) sit in one long line on the seats in the staffroom, like we are afraid to be separated. Except when one of us has to go on playground duty with our supervising teacher (who we basically shadow all day, except for recess and lunch time).

My class doesn't have the much lauded Interactive Whiteboard. The Year 2 class next door does. Bummer. Guess I'll have to teach old-school style.

I've memorised about 20 out of 22 names. Well, that was on Monday. We'll see how many I remember when I go back this coming Monday.

The first day, this past Monday, I mainly just observed and got to meet and chat with the kids. The coming Monday is when I will actually start acting as a student teacher, and I will teach a small group lesson (reading groups). The week after that, we have a week-long block, which is when we really get thrown into the deep end!

Our supervising teachers get PAID to take us on as prac students. I don't know why, but I was surprised by this. The principal of the school assured us that you "couldn't even buy a pair of shoes" with the amount of money the university pays them, so I guess it's more of a token thankyou present than anything else.

What else, what else? All my students seemed great, but it was only my first day, so we shall see. I'm just excited to finally be TEACHING! I've spent a lot of time in classrooms, but always as a volunteer or teacher's aide, and have never actually planned, taught and evaluated a lesson before. Or had myself as a teacher evaluated! That part's a little daunting, but our teachers have to give us lots of verbal feedback first before the start formally assessing us on paper, so that allows for any minor problems to be straightened out.

Mostly I'm just so EXCITED to be getting the opportunity to meet and teach these kids! It feels like a long time coming... I can't wait for next Monday!

Back to School

Was it really in July that I last posted? Wow. I'm such a bad blogger. I hadn't even noticed that it had been that long! I've been so flat out with uni work that everything else got put on the backburner I guess.

So... what have I been up to? I have classes pretty much all day Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Thursdays are the best days, because:
a) it's the shortest day at uni for me (only 2 classes, 1.5 hours each)
and
b) I have my Science & Technology class, where we get to play with materials and make cool stuff!

It's just like being a kid at school again, except we don't get bossed around by a teacher, and we have little instructions so we get to figure it out for ourselves. Things to remember for when I am the teacher, right?!

Here's a photo of me from class yesterday, where we made traffic lights out of polysterene cups, wood, hot glue, masking tape, aluminium foil, coloured cellophane, a 9V battery, 6 wires and a light bulb! So much fun- and we're adults! Can you imagine how much fun kids would have doing this stuff?

Showing off our technical prowess:


We even made our own "switch" out of a small piece of wood, thumbtacks and a paperclip, so you can choose whether to have the red, orange or green light on.


See! It really does light up!

We are learning lots of cool stuff in this class- last week we made cars out of milk or juice cartons, then we put them on a ramp and had a race! Unfortunately my car's back axle was a bit skew-iff and the car veered to the right a lot... needless to say, it didn't win.

Our teacher recorded it all on his mini flip camera and then played it on the data projector through his laptop for us all to see! We also made graphs on the laptop, interactive whiteboard and regular whiteboard- can you imagine how much fun kids would have with that? Not to mention all the learning involved- lots of maths in particular (measurement, speed, physics and gravity, just from racing the cars themselves!)


I can't wait until we get to go on prac (next Monday!!!) and get to bring all these ideas we've learnt and put them into practice in a real classroom.

Have I mentioned where I'm going on prac? My old primary school! How funny is that?! It will be weird to be back there after about 10 years- and even weirder to be there as a teacher! I'll get to go in the staffroom! That was definitely a no-no when I was a student there. It'll be like getting a backstage pass! Behind the scenes at CMPS!

Just for fun, here's me back in 1998 and 1999, in the school uniform! I'm thinking I'll take these photos in to class on Monday, just in case the students don't believe me when I tell them I went there too!

Look at that badge on my collar- that was for School Representative Council, I think.
I wish my hair still looked like that- beautiful and straight, and look at my natural colour! I will spend the rest of my life trying to get a hairdresser who can attempt to dye it back to that blondey-brown colour.

And this blue badge on the photo down the bottom here? That was for Library Monitor. Don't laugh- it was cool back then! Everyone wanted to be a Library Monitor. It basically meant that you got to pretend to be in charge of all the kids who were in the library at lunchtime.

I remember this photo day- I was growing my fringe out, and had my mum put one roller in the front just so it wouldn't hang in my eyes and look horrible by the time it came to get photos taken (because we were in the older grades, we were always the last to get our photos taken, right at the end of the day after lunch when you were all sweaty from playing at lunchtime).

I still looked cute though. If only it was that easy now. You just wait til Monday- I'll be up at the crack of dawn, blowdrying my hair, putting makeup on, deliberating over outfit choices! Kids don't know how easy they have it!

Where I'm At

Today is my last day of class for the semester!

Semester One, complete!

These past 10 weeks have gone so fast, I can barely believe the first semester is over. I now have the rest of May, the whole of June, and two weeks of July off! So much spare time, I won't know what to do with myself!

Of course, there are a few uni-related things I have to finish up before the semester is over. We have a workshop on behaviour management to attend, and we have to make a presentation on what we have learnt through working with our community service agencies.

The fact that my group hasn't actually started mentoring at our school yet is a bit of an inconvenience, but we have still had a few opportunities to meet with the kids and get to know them.

I have to say, the main thing I have learnt is not to judge people by their post code. The area within which the school is located is one of particularly low socioeconomic status (how's that for a university term?!) and has quite a bad reputation.

BUT, the kids and parents that I have met from the school are all fantastic. Whether this is because the teachers only selected 'good' kids, I don't know, but regardless, it has changed my perspective.

We will start mentoring hopefully next week, and visit the kids at school once or twice a week throughout our holidays.

I've also had the opportunity to start mentoring at a different school, Macarthur Anglican School, which is a sister school in the same association as PAC, where I went. I got an email from uni offerring spots in the program, and immediately sent my application. Turns out, being enrolled in a teaching program does wonders for your resumé! I got picked straight away. I'm really excited to be working with a very different group of kids to those that I am currently.

So, that's a quick catch up on what I'm up to.

Tomorrow (Friday) I'm having my girl friends over for a sleepover! I need it. We need it. It shall be good. I'm looking forward to some down time!

Catch up

Just a quick post- because I am at uni and am about to go to a lecture in 10 minutes.

I have been absolutely smashed by uni work. With two weeks to go, it seems like they have hit us hard with assignments. I have to do lesson plans, presentations, group work, make a website, write essays... the list goes on.

Last week I didn't even venture out of the house unless it was for uni. I spent the public holiday Monday literally holed up in my house all day. I didn't got to dancing that day... or the next... or the next. I even skipped Bible Study. I was so snowed under. Comer the weekend, I was exhausted. I got home after work on Sunday afternoon and had a nap with the intention of waking up around 5.30pm in time to go to church... and it just didn't happen. When I woke up, it was dark. But it felt so good to sleep!

Now, I have a little break from assignments (and I mean literally a few days' reprieve), so I'm back in the world a little bit. Yesterday I was at Kingswood campus all day for a skills day for Year 9 kids as part of the community service we have to do in our degree. It was actually quite fun to hang out with older kids and get to know them a little bit. Since they're pretty unfamiliar with the campus, we organised an "Amazing Race"-style challenge where they were put into teams and had to find certain locations using cryptic clues. My team won! We got in trouble for running inside though... haha. But it was worth it!

Tonight my Bible Study is going out for dinner and then to see Iron Man 2 at the movies. On Saturday night we went to Jenny's house and watched the first Iron Man whilst making homemade pizzas, and we all liked it so much that we agreed to go and see the sequel tonight! Hopefully it lives up to the hype!

Life at Uni

This week was my first week back at uni. We've had orientation stuff for the past few weeks, but yesterday was the first day of classes.

And what a full day it was!

I had classes from 9am to 6pm, with only an hour lunch break in between. I got to 3 o'clock and thought "I'm ready to go home now!" and yet I still had three classes left to go!

I have a few classes tomorrow, but the majority are on Tuesdays. Obviously Tuesday is a really big day for me, but it's exciting getting to finally learn about primary teaching and so that excitement overrides any tiredness!


This semester, I am doing 4 subjects as usual:
Educational Psychology for Primary Teachers
Classrooms Without Borders
Education, Knowledge, Society & Change
Primary PD/H/PE (Personal Development, Health & Physical Education)


PD/H/PE is the only curriculum subject (ie like English, Maths, Science, Creative Arts etc) that I am doing in my first semester. I guess they figure that they want to "ease" us into the Primary curriculum- if you could call it that!

However it's anything but easy- unlike most subjects that only have a lecture and a tutorial each week, in PD/H/PE we have both of those, plus a class where we actually go to the gym and participate in PE lessons as if we were the kids. We had our first class yesterday, and it was actually really fun! (And I'm not even a sport person!)

Our lecturers and teachers are really great- most of them have been or are still primary teachers, so they tell a lot of stories and relate the unit content to the classroom. They are really good at giving us tips throughout the classes.

- eg. "Most important thing- save your voice! Invest in a good whistle."

"See how I never let you stand behind me? You always want to keep the children in front of you where you can see them all."

"Always make sure you're the one facing the sun- can you imagine kids staring into the sun? They'd use it as an excuse for not doing any work."

"Make everything into a game. Keep it fun, and they won't even notice that they're learning."

"You want your kids to go home raving about what they've done at school today. Nobody wants to hear their child answer "Nothin'" when they ask what they did in class that day."


Those are just some of the quotes that stood out to me. Like I said, our teachers are really good at injecting pieces of advice and wisdom into what they are telling us.


One of the biggest things they told us is that teaching is more than just English and Maths (although given that Australia has just received a new National curriculum, you wouldn't know it because all the focus is on these two subject areas at the moment).

As primary teachers, we get to teach across 6 KLAs (Key Learning Areas) in a class that we have for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week. Teaching English, Maths, Science & Technology, PD/H/PE, Human Society & its Environment, and Creative Arts means that at uni, we have to learn a lot and we have to learn it fast.There are only 10 weeks in the university semester (to keep in line with the school term) and so the pressure is on, so to speak!


And to up the ante, for my Classrooms Without Borders unit, we have to complete 20-30 hours of placement in a community agency. (Think voluntary community service). Starting in April, I will be working with the St Vincent de Paul Society teaching and mentoring newly arrived refugee kids. It will be a challenge, as I've never met, much less worked with, refugees before but I'm very much looking forward to it. I know I'll learn a lot.

Children & Wonder

I have a quote printed on plain white paper that is pinned beside my desk right where I sit now, typing this.

It says this:

"Sometimes, looking deep into the eyes of a child, you are conscious of meeting a glance full of wisdom. The child has known nothing yet but love and beauty - all this piled up world knowledge you have acquired is unguessed at by him. And yet you meet this wonderful look that tells you in a moment more than all the years of experience have seemed to teach"


As I walked from the teacher's carpark across the playground today, within seconds of my feet stepping onto the pavement I must have had about five kids from the Year 3 class I work in call out...
"Hello, Miss Parata!"
"Miss Parata, are you coming into our class today?"
"Look at ______, Miss Parata!"
"Miss Parata, I got ______!"


(And I'm proud to say, the Headmaster was walking towards me, coming from the opposite direction at the same time, and I got more greetings than him!)


The kids make me smile. I love the way their minds work. What's important to them is what's going on right now. They're not worried about tomorrow, or the next day. They're worried about how long it is til lunch time and how much longer do they have to wait until they can go play?


Today in maths, I look over at one little boy in the class (who is often off with the fairies) and expected to have to get him to focus and get moving on his work. I look at his sheet and see he's already completed the whole thing. And it wasn't particularly easy either.

I love that kids can surprise you like that. Just when you think you've got them nailed, they pull out something that turns you on your head.


So many people underestimate children. I think they have more wisdom than we give them credit for. They're not jaded by the world yet. They think they can do anything, become anything, be anyone they want to be. Most kids, if you asked them, wouldn't tell you they aspire to be a secretary or someone with a desk job. They'll tell you they want to be an astronaut, or a zookeeper, or a superhero. I love that. That "dream big" attitude all kids have.

We need more of that.