In The Driver's Seat

They’re looking at me & waiting. Waiting for me to speak or curl up in a ball with fear in my eyes. The latter doesn’t happen; I’m prepared & ready to go. I begin my lesson & the next thing I know, the period is over. The students are leaving for their next class, the room is the same as before, and I’m alive. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. One lesson down and many more to go.

For the third week of Teaching Practice, I was in the driver’s seat – the line of fire. The regular teachers in several classes stepped aside & handed the class over to me for the period. No matter how good your lesson looks on paper, anything can happen in practice. The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly – you can’t avoid them. All you can do is steer towards the good & hope you don’t hit any potholes along the way. It’s a territorial struggle; if you don’t control the class, the class will control you. Even though I’ve been observing for two weeks, it’s a different ball game when being the teacher because the students behave differently towards a newcomer.

Most of the classes I taught turned out okay but there were some that were more challenging. Even though I taught cadets back in Canada, it’s much different when teaching regular students – they don’t come pre-disciplined & I don’t have assistants to maintain the students in check. You’re on your own. You just have to make do with what you have. Would be nice to have a Taser but the outcome wouldn’t be pretty.

The observing teachers were impressed with my knowledge of the subjects, lesson planning, organization, & good abilities in answering questions, except I still need to work on class control & being more mobile. Turns out I prefer to be a lecturer & stand at the front – good for university, but for high school I need to be everywhere & giving out more activities. Some of the teachers only stand at the front when they teach but they can get away with that because they’ve been teaching. I’m still in training.

Week 3 was the teaching test run and I’ve been practicing on what to improve on so Week 4 should be much better. If not . . . I wonder where I can get a Taser?

When I met up with my friends at the bar on Friday, they too had some rough classes but were able to survive. Not a lot of people showed up because of exhaustion – a lot of work is needed to prepare, teach, & control. Maybe I’ll skip having kids. Aside from that, my friends have been enjoying the teaching experience. I’m guessing more will show up next Friday when they have more strength.

The rest of the week was pretty much uneventful & flew by fast. The price of food increased slightly, especially with fruits & vegetables. For Week 4, I’ll continue teaching Year 9 & 10 Social Studies and begin teaching Year 11 Music on Wednesday. I’m beginning to attach names to faces which is good because I can’t address everyone as ‘Hey You.’

It has been 2 months since I landed in New Zealand (time goes by fast) & the fact hasn’t hit me in the face yet. If it has I didn’t feel it; I’m stronger than I used to be. As well, I don’t feel homesick. I haven’t asked any of my friends if they are because they still appear strong to me. The only thing the Canadian students are worried about is if they’ll receive their student loans (OSAP) from Ontario before they run out of money. I’ve been away from my Canadian homeland many times in recent years so the whole homesick feeling is practically non-existent. The only thing I kind of miss is my PC back home because it has my games. I could really go for Command & Conquer or Call of Duty right now, but instead I’ve been confined to playing Freecell & reading novels.

Time to get back to work.