I have honestly been a little worried about this practicum so far. The reason? My mentor teacher. I have never seen a teacher yell so much. We had heard that the BYU girls were always a little shocked by the strictness of the New Zealand teachers, but I didn’t think it would be like this. She is a nice lady, and I love seeing her teach when she really gets into it, but she raises her voice much too often. I’ve been worried that the students wouldn’t respond to me for discipline because there is no way I want to copy my mentor teacher. Today, I found a bit of relief. We were on our way to swimming, and she had asked the students to line up outside while she found something on her desk. It ended up taking her longer than she thought, so she asked me, “Will you yell outside the window at them to just be quiet and wait? As nicely as possible of course.” Well, I wasn’t going to yell, of course, so I just stuck my head out the window and told them I would be out in 30 seconds and by that time I needed two straight lines with no talking. I walked outside, positively reinforced those who were doing what I asked, and almost everyone shaped up. Then to get those few stragglers I played a little game of, “If you can hear me, touch your head. If you can hear me, touch your toes. If you can hear me touch the sky, etc. etc.” And guess what I heard? Silence! Did I yell at them? No. Did I still get their attention and everyone on task ready to go? Yes. Boo-ya.
One of my favorite parts of swimming so far:
David (cute little Korean boy): “Miss Burnett, Miss Burnett! Watch me do a starfish!” David proceeds to extend his arms and legs as far as possible into a big X and belly flops into the water. Apparently he was a starfish, with his two arms, two legs and one head making up the five points. I don’t know if you can get the right image from this, but it was hilarious. And he just kept doing it over and over.
We don’t have to go to school tomorrow since we only go Monday-Thursday, so we excited to go on a little Auckland adventure…we’ll see where we end up!
Hang in there, Heidi. A lot of teachers kind of get thrown into a classroom before really being able to figure out what kind of teaching style is going to work for them. The more that you can watch other teachers working, the more that you can analyze the best approach for your own classroom. You will make an awesome teacher! We love you!
ReplyDelete