My Musing

Three months ago I wrote about what I thought were my positives and weaknesses. I believe that I was on track with my observations. It is difficult to fully judge my teaching performance from this semester since the longest I spent in a classroom was a week. What I saw during that week was no surprise to me. It took a little bit for me to get into the flow of things but once I did it felt very natural. I was a little fortunate that the classes that I was helping with were very well behaved classes and they were pretty interested in being in the wood shop. That makes my position much easier. I was positive the entire week with the students and encouraged them to try and make their projects shine beyond the ordinary. They responded very well to my attitude and began to respect my opinions and suggestions. I am looking forward to my practicum session to have the opportunity to develop much better relationships with the school and the students. The daily visits nor the week long visit gave me a full assessment of my teaching styles but it gave me a pretty good idea. One of the weaknesses that I suggested I had is a lack of patience on some days. I did not have enough time in the school to have that patience tested. To combat a possible outburst or sngry behavior on my part, I just need to keep in mind that most of the time the students are trying to stay on task and busy. The ones that are not staying on task just a need a little direction. Some students you can show them the path and they will make their way down it, others will need help during most of the journey. Getting upset with someone will not only spoil my day, but theirs as well. During my practicum I am sure that there will be a day or two that will test me and I will have to keep an eye out for it and diffuse it as soon as possible. Overall I am not sure how much that I grew with my experiences this semester instead I received more confidence and reaffirmed that I kind of know what I am doing and that I could be good at this job if I put in the effort. The most important thing that I need to continue my growth is some time in the trenches. Growth always happens when I am under fire from all directions such as students, admin, and parents. There is nothing like a little real life pressure to establish good habits.

I had the pleasure of visiting KLO Middle School this week. The information and opinions on middle schools that I had recieved before visiting the school was that the age group does not work well. The grade 9’s are mentally and sometimes physically not ready to be the leaders of the school and bear that responsability as well as the grade 7’s being too young and impressionable to be grouped with the older students. Luckily I didn’t experience this at all at KLO. Most of the morning we were escorted around the school exploring the different classes by grade 9’s that were registered in a leadership class. They took this role seriously and understood the role that they were asked to play. I had the chance to ask the Principal about the negative opinions that I had heard and how she dealt with her middle school. She said that as soon as you have the expectation that the students can’t handle the responsability then they won’t. Just because they will not go out of their way to aquire some responsability that doesn’t mean that they can’t bear the weight. Sure there will be some students that can’t but how will you know until you place them in that situation. I don’t believe I have enough information to say whether or not I think that the middle school system works but I have seen it work very well first hand.

I have just spent a week at the school where I will be doing my practicum. It had much more of an impact on me that the one day visits. I was able to see the students two or three times throughout the week and build a relationship with them. I spent the entire week in the wood shop with my sponsor teacher and felt extremely comfortable in that environment by the end of the week. I was given the opportunity to do some safety and operation demos on a couple of the tools and they all went smoothly. The first one could have been a bit smoother since it came up very suddenly, but the message was still passed on. The students also began to rely on me for some instruction and tips since the regular teacher usually had a lineup of students waiting to ask questions. The classes that I participated in was one grade 8 class, a grade 9/10 class, and a grade 11/12. The difference between the three was enormous and the older the class, the easier they were to manage by far. It was the level of exposure and experience that the students brought to the class that was the main factor. The grade 8’s had to be supervised with every opperation with power tools since it was their first or second time on the machines. The grade 9/10’s could be left alone for the most part but some incidents on the table saw changed that. In a two week period there had been 4 kickbacks on the table saw. Only one of them ended up causing any damage; a bruise on the hip. It was a remarkably fortunate teaching moment. The students got to see first hand the negative results when you do not follow the safety guidelines and in turn learned some respect for the machines. Two of the students were quite nervous to either do thin cuts on the table saw or even use the saw at all. With a little persuasion and some wise words the got back on and did just fine. For the week that I was there every student in that class had to ask permission and be supervised by either myself or the teacher. The grade 11/12 class was a dream. Almost every student was on task creating their own project or the project assigned by the teacher. There were at all different stages of the projects but making progress. There was little need to instruct them on operating the equipment, except the jointer. They could never wrap their head around using that properly. The instruction consisted of how to make some phase of their project work or some time to do that phase better. Overall, I had a wonderful time and could easily see myself doing that job for many years and have a great time doing it.