Week 4

Week 4 is done.  Wow!  Time has passed in that weird way where it doesn't feel like any time at all has passed, but I also feel like I've been there forever.  I think that means I enjoyed it. 

I can't wait for next week.  I feel like I'm in a groove.  I like what I'm teaching, I like my students and I'm really starting to like the whole process.  It's getting easier and easier to plan what I'm going to do.  It's getting easier to recover from failed experiments, and then trying them again. 

I started teaching my 2nd class this week. I was/am very comfortable with the first class.  But it threw me for a loop the first couple days with this new set of students.  They are very different.  They ask different questions, get stuck on different concepts and have a different group personality.  I think it was really nice to have gotten the chance to gain confidence with the first group before having to learn how to bounce back and forth.  My first lesson was a bit of a flop.  I felt like I got behind and never managed to catch up.  That was Block 1.  Then I got to Block 4 and my original group.  It was like I was home.  The same material went awesome. 

We went on a field trip today.  My mentor teacher and I took 45 grade 11 students to Galaxy Land for a physics lab.  It was certainly a very different experience than the couple of field trips I've been on with Natalie where the kids held hands and walked in neat lines.  These were field trip veterans.  They were also really well behaved kids who made the bus driver swoon as she gushed to us about how nice they were on the bus and they all thanked her as they got off.  I guess she'd driven for a field trip a few weeks ago where the teacher got to the point where he had her pull over and threatened to take them all back to the school.  Our kids?  None of them ever stood up or did anything that got her attention. 

I think that is probably one of the things that has surprised me the most.  When I tell people I am going to be a teacher, they seem compelled to tell me what little shits students are these days...  I haven't seen it.  I've seen students push limits (mostly in other classes).  I've students try to take/get away with the most they can.  I've seen them show no interest at all in their futures.  But I've also not seen them be rude, even when being rudely berated by a sub for something they didn't do.  I've seen them hold doors for each other and thank the bus driver.  They smile and say hi in the hall and say good night if they pass the classroom at the end of the day. 


It's been a good but long week.  Next week I get evaluated...  That should  be fun :)