School daze
March 4th, 2006 at 10:37 pm (Rants)
So I’ve managed to get through five entire weeks of being a teacher.
I seem to be doing fine judging by reports I have had from my supervisor and other people who have wandered into my classroom over the past few weeks, and I maintain some degree of sanity, which has to be a positive thing. I still make organisational blunders such as getting the day when I have to be at an in-service wrong by an entire week and stuffing up the arrangements that had been made for a casual to replace me that day…I felt pretty stoopid about that one. I’ve missed my playground duty once because I didn’t know that they’d changed the roster, and I’m semi-regularly confised about the timing of things such as assemblies, integration, RFF etc, but I’m managing to hold it together, and I just pray that my brain would become programmed enough in time to be able to juggle the bazillion things I am just supposed to know instinctively, without dropping anything. There are lots of those instinctive things which I am supposed to just know…like how to legally keep a class roll, (no, not bread storage…), what the red card that suddenly turned up in my pidgeon hole was for, why I have to contribute hard earned money to something called the ’social club’, and what to tell a child when they ask if they can go somewhere that I’ve never heard of. I still giggle to myself when small, lost looking children approach me in the playground and ask me if i have seen their friend, Herbert, or Janice or something, whom I have never met, seen or heard of in my life, but such is the way a child’s mind works. Teachers know everything. A dangerous, but flattering misconception.
The whole experience makes me tired if nothing else, and people who say teaching is an easy job with short hours and long holidays should be shot on sight. I work longer days than some lawyers I know. They say it gets easier. Bring it on.
Lucy said,
March 9, 2006 at 9:21 am
That is so exciting that you get to be a real live teacher!!!! Do you know what else would be awesome…. if by some weird coincidence you were assigned as my “cooperating teacher” for prac next year… although i think you have to sign up to do it….
Simon said,
March 13, 2006 at 6:54 pm
“people who say teaching is an easy job with short hours and long holidays should be shot on sight” - here, here.
I have now started two careers as a graduate. The first, engineering, was far far easier. When you start as an engineer (or most other professions I suspect) - you are trusted with little and expected to do little. Teaching, on the other hand, is full-on; from Day 1 you have a full load and all the responsibilities of a classroom teacher; just the same as a teacher with 10 years experience (all-be-it far less gracefully).
Whilst I’m just keeping up with lesson preparation, I didn’t really think before I started this job about the extras (e.g. preparing rosters and supervision for a numeracy test, setting and marking exams, writing reports (4 a year!), behaviour reports, after school detentions, lunches lost to detentions, parent-teacher night (again, 4 a year!), “ILOs” - In-Lieu-Ofs - filling in for other teachers who are absent, meetings that are added to your day rather than as part-of).
“They say it gets easier.” - or maybe your start to think of it as normal?
4 weeks 3 days till a working holiday/sanity restoration.
Lorien said,
March 16, 2006 at 5:07 pm
Tee hee. Simon says. ::ahem:: My kids love Simon says. Maybe we should swap classes. (Although that may lead to the downfall of your maths students, and the uproar of my autistic kids!)
I think I’ll hold on to the hope that it gets easier!
Simon said,
March 16, 2006 at 5:29 pm
I think if I started “Simon says” I might get laughed out of my classroom…
David G said,
April 12, 2006 at 8:21 am
What lawyers do you know who work less hours?
Lorien said,
April 12, 2006 at 11:33 pm
Ok, so that was hyperbole…you guys were the best example I could think of of long working hours; but just for the sake of argument, on average, how many hours a day does your average lawyer work? And I was counting my work hours to include the hours of work I do at home in preparation etc for school, not just hours spent at school.
Tim Haynes said,
May 2, 2006 at 6:41 pm
Imagine getting a prac student in your first years. Not only dealing with your workload but being responsible for someone elses training. I didn’t want anyone else to step foot into my classroom to observe I felt I was going that bad. Good thing they don’t give early teachers that responsible.