Practicum Placement #2 – Walkerville Collegiate Institute – November 23 – December 4, 2015
On my second practicum placement I began teaching more and experienced a lower grade level. In my first placement I was teaching only grade 12, but this placement I was able to teach grade 9. One thing I found challenging was trying to understand and differentiate between the two levels of students, as one activity I had for the grade 12s seemed too juvenile for their learning level and some ideas I had for the grade 9s seemed too advanced for them. Both of my classes, behaviour wise, were absolutely amazing. No students in my classes ever had an outburst or talked back to me, so it will be interesting in the next placement to see how I am able to handle this situation.
Being in LEAD has given me the opportunity to work in other areas of the school outside of my content area. For this placement I was spending my second period in a Credit Recovery classroom. This was an immensely diverse classroom with students ranging from age 15 to 19 and working on a variety of credits from English to Food and Nutrition to Math. When I was given the placement, I was initially terrified as these students were known for having a bad reputation, bad attitudes and frequently rebelling against the teacher. When I walked into the classroom, the teacher had all students sit at a table in the centre of the room (the room was a computer lab). When they were at the table, they were not allowed to have headphones in or use their cellphones. The usual conversation lasted between 10 to 15 minutes and most students were able to put their phones away for that short period of time, knowing that once they left the table they would be allowed to use it again. At the table, they were encouraged to use academic language only and were instructed to not talk about aspects of their lives that were not appropriate for a teacher to hear. These students were an absolutely amazing group, who were able to hold conversations about simple topics such as an area of improvement, as report cards had just come out, to more complex topics such as the refugee issues in Canada. The students amazed me not only in their willingness to welcome me into their classroom but also in their openness to me helping in terms of school work. My experience in this classroom alone has taught me more about teaching than my two content area courses. I saw such a diverse group of students who had such big hearts and goals. It was a reassuring moment that I am in the right program and my goal of being a teacher is exactly what I want to do.
In my content area classrooms, I taught my students content I had never learned before. This was a huge challenge for me, even leading one day to a breakdown and questioning of my career path. I was unsure how it was fair of my associate to expect me to teach a concept I myself had never learned. This quickly became an opportunity for me to learn and grow. I took this chance to play the role of a student once again and learn the material on Greek Mythology. After doing many readings, I decided to make this a fun week and did group presentations, looked at picture books, and did artwork about Heroes. It was a moment when I realized that being a teacher also means being a learner. It was a moment of weakness that I was able to see the positive in.
After my first day teaching two classes my associate emailed me letting me know how wonderful my lesson that day was and how he really enjoyed my differentiated learning strategies. This was something immediately made my day. Overall my placement was wonderful, my students seemed genuinely sad that I was leaving and I absolutely cannot wait to be back at Walkerville to see the students and their progress so far.