I’m not sure if it’s made a difference or not but i’ve recently upgraded wordpress – i was having problems with my RSS feeds and am now using RSS 2.0 which means the new feed address is: http://www.annatsang.com/?feed=rss2 and not http://www.annatsang.com/feed
Well school is pretty much over for the year! I can’t believe I made it through alive! I survived my first year teaching and boy, does that feel like an accomplishment! Looking back I can’t even comprehend how I did it, but time goes forwards thankfully and here I am in December with one year under my belt.
You know, I really feel blessed. I really love my job as hard work as it is, I really love interacting with the kids. Getting to know their personalities, having fun and being cheeky with them, seeing them grow and mature (well some of them!). Its also been an interesting year for me to try and establish myself as a teacher. After leading youth for 2 and a half years, coming along side youth and seeing them flourish spiritually, being a teacher is definitely a different type of ‘hat’.
Being a teacher I had to learn to lead from above, from a disciplinarian point of view, rather than leading sideways like a friend. I feel its taken me this whole year to sort of have an idea of what a balance looks like where I am firm, fair but friendly (the 3 F’s!). Its made me have to be more assertive and clear about my expectations. I’ve really had to learn to lower my tolerance level as well. Sometimes I found myself letting things slide in my class behavior management because to me personally, it can take quite a bit before something irritates me but I’ve had to realise that my indifference to certain things affect other students in the classroom – so basically I’ve had to learn to be alot stricter! Hmm, yeah ALOT more stricter…
But I’m learning to have a balance. I’m learning to not over compensate my phelgy-ness with a nazi regime. I’m learning more to be more of myself in the classroom, only with defined and clear boundaries. Ah, got to love that word.. boundaries..
I had some fun with my year 9 media class on the last day of school. They came bumbling into the computer lab saying “What are we going to do today, Miss?? Can we do something fun?? Can we play games on the computer?“
Ha. Unlikely.
After I got them all sitting down and listening I told them that today for our double period they were to sit quietly and write a 1500 word essay (1500 words is alot for year 9′s – I have trouble getting a paragraph out of some of them!) about what they have learnt this year in media studies and that their ENTIRE year’s grade is going to rest on this essay.
Needless to say he class burst into a tirade of “What?! Miss, this is our last class can’t we do something fun?“. I continued to watch bemused as they logged onto the computers and opened up Microsoft Word, grumbling and all dagger eyes till finally I burst into a giggle and told them I was just joking and that we were just going to watch Shrek 3 today. “Miss!!!” and sighs of relief!
Hehe, I am such a comedian. I like being a teacher, its so much fun 