Two steps forward, One step back
Oh, the vicissitudes of personal progress. Oh, how I remember consoling ESOL students with the nature of learning. I use to draw it on the whiteboard, graphically, the curve of ability over time, going rocketing up and then plateauing, maybe even inexplicably receding a little, before climbing once more to all new heights.
Students didn't get much relief from their frustrations of course. I think they recognised it as my scientific, complicatedly logical ploy to make them feel better when they failed to reach their own expectations.
Well, the tables have for have a year been turning and turning as I have become teacher and student, learning as I taught and teaching as I learnt. And with time, my frustration has grown. Today was when this was clearest to myself. I made several breakthroughs but at the same time tripped on unexpected hurdles, which have worn me thin.
With now just three days left in my practicum and almost all of my required teaching done, hitting hurdles is mentally taxing not because they are hurdles but because my brain recognises that the necessity to act is no longer there, and to do something requires a bigger push. But today, on several occasions, I reverted back to the most elementary, thoughtless kind of classroom management. And I was too tired to really care.
I could skeptically look at the graph, hoping to see it as a fallacy, in order to sustain my disappointment. But I know it is right, and that is my respite.
I DID make some breakthroughs. Three days to go, I could make this into something that I can really build in on my next placement. I can say that, but will I do it...
2 comments:
What is "the most elementary, thoughtless kind of classroom management"? What's wrong with it? Things don't need to be difficult to be worthwhile.
I am just learning how to use messaging on these blogs. Technically this should just come in below your message.
Re: "the most elementary, thoughtless kind of classroom management"
By elementary, I meant what a novice teacher would do. Things that I used to do to control a class in the past that have not worked and will never work. Instinctual stuff which is not correct. For example, my associate teacher left and told me to get them to tidy up the class. I first told the whole class but that was ineffective. I started telling individual students what they should be doing, trying to stop two of the energetic ones to stop running around (they wouldn't stop) etc. One-on-One approaches do not make the class clean, retain order or achieve anything. It means that 95% of the class do what they want and nothing is achieved.
I should have said the original command with more thought, with an incentive perhaps. "Everybody clean up the classroom and I will lookout for the best cleaner who would get a sticker!"
After a few minutes, the time was right to forget about what cleaning remained, command the whole classes attention and gather on the mat. There I could have praised those that did a good job tidying, and given a sticker. Got individual students (maybe those who were mucking around) to do a few minor tasks (like pushing in chairs or picking up puzzle pieces).
Instead the class was in as much chaos when the associate teacher left as when she came, with no noticeable difference in tidiness. She just bellowed "Onto the mat!", all of them scurried to the mat, order was regained with a single cue and she wound down the day with a few administrative tasks and a song or two.
I didn't follow any of the appropriate ways of going about organising the class correctly. I missed the simple effective ways, and reverted back to the difficult elementary, and flawed ways of doing things.
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