Task 2.3 Life of a Teacher

• How did you cope/manage to complete the three days of “Life of a Teacher”?

Since I spent a fair amount of time teaching and getting to know my class beforehand, I feel I coped reasonably well. Especially considering that my mentor teacher was quite strict in her daily routine, it was easy to learn and follow. I spent quite some time alone with my class as I had done substitution with them due to my mentor teacher taking a day off due to a wedding in the family; she also asked me to teach many lessons and sometimes entire days of teaching at a moment's notice as she is one of the two acting HODs in the Foundation Phase and needed a lot of spare time to do administration tasks during class time. The one thing that I did struggle with though was the slight lack of respect from the students as they did not fully take me as a teacher as their class teacher would override a few decisions that I made in the classroom, for example, if a student asked to go to the bathroom during a time where I was teaching or giving instructions, I would ask them to wait until I was done before going and the student would then ask my mentor teacher and she would allow them to go. I also struggled slightly with some of the admin tasks, such as collecting monies from the students due to the fact that my mentor teacher did not fully explain and when it was being done, I was unable to fully observe her process as I was required to watch her class and ensure that they were performing the tasks given to them at that time. I also struggled slightly with time management as there are a fair few weaker students in this class that take longer to grasp topics and complete tasks. However, even with all that I have stated above, I feel that I managed and coped well, especially since I had created a report with my students and knew how to teach this group well.

• How did you feel taking on all the responsibilities of a teacher in Block 1 compared to Block 2?

Being that I had completed nine consecutive weeks of Teaching Experience, I did not have the privilege of doing this over two blocks. However, I did notice that during my second day of teaching and taking on the role of being the teacher, the students started to take me more seriously and looked at me as if I had more authority than the day before. The tasks that I was taking up also became easier and I was able to manage things better as well as I had gotten used to multitasking between lessons and other responsibilities as well as keeping an eye on my students. I also learned to judge time better when the bell did not work during the load-shedding periods and was able to properly move between periods and manage the time during the day and lessons better.

• Which activities did you find most challenging? How did you overcome these challenges?

I found it most challenging trying to complete admin tasks while controlling the class and keeping an eye on them. In order to combat this, I included the students in these tasks by asking the students to run little errors that they were very excited to complete, such as fetching the register from the office and getting things signed by other teachers for approval. I also struggled to manage the stronger students as they completed their tasks and activities much quicker than the rest of the class and became restless as most of them had already read the books in the small reading corner that the teacher had set up for them and would use this as an opportunity to distract their peers from completing their work; to combat this, I printed "busy packs" for the students that included eye-spy pages, crosswords, word searches and coloring pages for them to complete while their peers completed the work that was assigned

• Analyse the results of your self-evaluation survey where would you rate yourself higher?

• Justify how you have improved these competencies through this experience.

• Look at the exit level outcomes and the final comments of your mentor teacher in your School Assessment Log (TE411). Compare this to the initial self-evaluation you had completed at the beginning of your teaching experience.