Teaching

So it's the end of my second full day of teaching. Wow. This is something else! My last school, the class sizes were about twenty, with one being about thirty. There were a total of four classes (including kindergarten), with each of the normal classes containing two year groups with between ten and fifteen students from each. So classes were 5/6 (for year five and year six) and I taught each class four times a week. Here the school is massive. The class sizes are about thirty per class, and each year has two classes. Some of the classes There are a twelve elementary classes plus three kindergarten classes. Fifteen different classes. So sadly, I don't get to teach each class very much, just one lesson a week. Obviously this time I'm here for much longer, but in six months I'll only get 24 hours with each of them. So I feel a lot of pressure to make sure each lesson with them is the best that I can deliver, there just isn't time to have a lesson that just doesn't work.

So who have I taught so far? Well I've been introduced and done some teaching with every year group (but not every class) and those early lessons were to work out what I needed to do with that year group. So this week we kicked straight into actual teaching. Monday I had both the year six classes and today I had both the year two classes. Massive contrast. Obviously. The year sixes are so incredible. One thing I'm struggling to work out how to deal with, and I guess it's a problem faced by 'the school system' in every country in every subject, is their abilities really do vary. There are a clear two or three in both classes that are incredibly bright and I think they must have some kind of home or private addition tutoring and support. The rest are about on par with the sixes from my last school. All (but one guy) really work their asses off though, and I don't mind when they can't do something if I can see they are really trying.

With these guys I've noticed my ability to do something on the fly, to just come up with something if a plan hadn't worked and I needed to think of something new, or if we just whizzed through the plan, is getting much better.

For example in a conversation we were reading through the phrase 'I don't know' came up. They didn't know what it meant. I hadn't prepared for this (the book with the conversation had been given to me only an hour before the lesson, so my original plan went out of the window). So I put up on the board 5+5=? They started calling out "Ten!" I said "Yes! Ten! I know!" and wrote 'I know' next to the equals sign. We did a few more really simple maths, 2+2 3x3 and for each one wrote the answer as 'I know.' Then I wrote 1,784x922=? They looked blank. A lot of "ums" and they didn't know. So I said "I don't know!" and wrote that as the answer, with don't underlined. They all got it straight away.

They are a lot of fun, the work hard and pay attention. It's a joy to work with them.

The two's. Oh god. Just. Oh god. Crazy, completely hyper, insist on jumping on their desks until the fall over. Can't play games with them because there are too many and not all want to play or will play, they get distracted seriously easily if they aren't being literally watched over. This by the way is actually about half of them. The other half to be fair are little angels, they follow my instructions, they try and repeat what i'm saying. They play the games and are happy to wait for it to be their turn. But when it's a class of thirty four, and seventeen of them are little monsters, it's really hard to work with those who actually want to work. A huge part of me just wants to take those that want to work and try and listen downstairs into another class room, leaving the crazies to be crazy. But I know they are too young to understand it, too young to have any real discipline. But it just makes the whole thing harder. Tuesdays will be really trying days, since them and kindergartens are my only classes.

I'm thinking of going away this weekend and I'm trying to come up with a plan. Thinking water sports sort of thing, there is rafting, canoeing and kayaking available really close to where I am, I can get a bus for just a couple of quid. I think it would be a day thing because accommodation up there is pretty expensive. I'm trying to find out if I need to book any rafting/kayaking/canoeing in advance or can just show up on the day. There isn't much information available, and what is has been repeated on most of the websites. So we'll just have to see.