Week 7- Professional 16/3/12

With our Grade 6 class on our last day teaching.

Unbelievably we have now finished our six weeks of teaching in Zambezi Basic School. This has been a very different placement to those we have had a home, and there were everyday challenges such as using a blackboard rather than a whiteboard, writing lesson plans by hand, teaching where English isn’t the first language, co-teaching, trying to discipline the children and trying to make lessons interesting with the blackboard being your only resource. There have also been some more random challenges, for example, this week I ended up running out of school after one of the pupils, and having to convince him to come back to school after he was pinched on the cheek by the class teacher! I think both Harriet and I embraced all these challenges and although we didn’t get it right all the time, this is all part of the learning process!

 

One of the huge differences with being in a school here is that you feel like a qualified teacher and teachers look to you for guidance, whereas at home you are the student and you get guidance from the class teacher. At first I found this very difficult because I felt like we had no one we could go to for advice and help when things went wrong, and this problem intensified during the past two weeks since our class teacher left us to cover another Grade 6 class. However, it is great to get this kind of experience because I always feel that I rely too heavily on the class teacher when they are in the room especially for discipline issues.

Harriet and I with the class teacher.

Obviously I have had Harriet and although initially I was quite nervous about co-teaching, I have really enjoyed the experience. I think I will now find it easier to guide the work of other adults (referring to competency sixteen, GTCNI, 2004), as Harriet and I are constantly giving each other guidance on what we need the other to do depending on who is doing the main teaching at the time. Another benefit of co-teaching is that the workload isn’t quite as heavy and I found it really beneficial to plan with another person, especially since mine and Harriet’s ideas usually complemented each other and when one of us was struggling with ideas the other was usually able to come up with something. I think I will really miss having another person alongside me on teaching practice next year!

The GTCNI (2004) refers to behaviour management in competencies seven and twenty-two, and obviously being able to cope with negative behaviour, enforce strategies for positive behaviour and control behaviours in the classroom is a hugely important part of my professional development. Unfortunately this is an area that I don’t feel very confident in and I know I still have a lot of learning to do. I feel that rather than improving my behaviour management skills, this placement has really just shown me how loudly I can shout (not very) and taught me how to cope with a sore throat! Behaviour management is very difficult because the children have never been taught that hitting each other, jumping off tables, talking over the top of someone else, or interrupting are behaviours which aren’t appropriate, so when me or Harriet try to stop them they usually just look at us with a confused expression!

An interactive science lesson based on 'food labelling'.

Overall, teaching in Zambezi Basic has been a really enjoyable practice and although I am always sad to see the end of teaching practice, I feel particularly attached to this placement and now find myself feeling like I want to keep going. We have implemented a lot of new strategies such as daily spellings, mental maths starters, maths games, interactive activities, and streamed literacy classes, which seem to have had really positive effects judging by feedback from pupils, teachers and even parents, and I am worried that things will just go back to normal now that we have left. All we can hope for is that we made a positive impact on the pupils over the past six weeks and that the teachers have learnt some positive teaching methods from us. I know that I have learnt a lot and I am certain that my time here will have a lasting impact on my professional development.

Playing our favourite maths game, 'super fingers'.

Teaching was very much our main focus this week and we spent quite a lot of time preparing our final lessons, talking with the teachers about continuing some of the implemented strategies, beginning dissertation preparation, sorting out resources to give to the school, finding presents for the children and just doing all the general ‘finishing up’. This means that our social life was not quite as hectic as it has been in previous weeks! But this wasn’t a problem as both of us are the type who definitely need our sleep and we both get very excited when we are in bed by 10pm knowing we will get a good eight hours of sleep!

We got paid a huge compliment this week when one of the workers at Jollyboys, whose son is in our class at school, spoke to the owner of Jollyboys saying how much his son’s attitude toward school had changed over the past weeks with us teaching. He mentioned how much his son was enjoying our classes; he was now getting excited for school in the mornings and most importantly, he understood a lot more of what he was being taught. This was such a boost for both of us and it really is the ultimate motivation for any teacher- that you could encourage a child to have a positive attitude towards learning and give them an enjoyable, beneficial education where they really are learning something.

Enjoying a free trip to the Falls!

Last weekend we had another public holiday on the Monday, this time for Youth Day so we got a long weekend! We had a brilliant Saturday and thanks to us now knowing some of the locals we were treated to a complimentary all you can eat breakfast and also a free trip to the Falls! We met the head chef of the Zambezi Sun, one of the upmarket hotels in Livingstone, and he was really eager to have breakfast with us, free of charge on his Saturday morning off. Harriet and I were a bit overwhelmed by the luxuriousness of it all, we aren’t used to being waited on and the staff were all so attentive because they were serving their boss! There was far too much to choose from and as usual we both ate much more than we needed; fruit, cereal, omelette, sausages, bacon, croissants, waffles and juice. Afterwards we were all in need of a good walk to walk off our huge breakfast and we got into the Falls free of charge because of the relationship between the hotel and the park. A shower at the Falls was a great activity on a Saturday morning and again I just fell even more in love with the spectacular views all around us. On our way back we got stopped by some people filming for Lonely Planet and got interviewed on our experience of the Falls. It was all very embarrassing and awkward but good fun at the same time, so if it ever airs I’m sure we will have a laugh at ourselves as we were soaking wet and I’m sure our accents will sound terrible! Then on Sunday we went on the African Queen Cruise which was a really lovely, relaxing experience and we both just love doing anything that involves being out on the river.

Relaxing on the African Queen. 

This week we start into our dissertation work which neither of us are really looking forward to because of the lack of literature out here for us to do the research, but I think we just need to get started and get stuck in! We are also going to be attending school for the first hour every morning (not losing the 6am starts just yet!) to continue our implementation of a streamed literacy concept, but this will be a good way to get us out of bed early and working!