Wow.
For most of my student life, I imagined that one day I’ll be a teacher and I’ll know what to do when I’m in front of my students. At the start of this week, I realised that this scenario isn’t a year or so away. It’s in a few days time and I had better get my act together, mentally and physically. I was given a class of year 8s which I am to teach math and science to and a class of year 10s which I have for science. I also got two amazing mentor teachers!
Because I had the year 8s for more lessons than the year 10, it didn’t take me as long to learn their names and for me to feel like they were my students. The class that I got was already very well behaved and in my first week I was given the reins to their learning. There weren’t many behavioral things I had to deal with except fidget spinners. There was a group of 4 boys who are capable but unwilling to do book work and found themselves playing with their spinners. After almost a whole lesson of trying to scaffold their task for them and then not making any progress, I had the idea of using the spinner as a timer to get their work done. If they got a section of their report done in the time it took for the spinner to stop, they would get another spin. If they didn’t I kept the spinner until lunch.
It worked. Those boys responded well to a bit of competition. They knew what the task was. They needed the right motivation to get started and through that I was able to build a relationship with them.
The year 10s didn’t quite feel like my class yet at the end of the first week and I’m supposed to be taking over next week. Most of that class are well behaved but there are a few students who will be quite challenging. I will have work out a way of spending time with all students such that I don’t focus entirely on the challenging ones but I also don’t leave them behind. I’ll find out how I go next week.