TGIF?

Fridays...you’d think they would be something to look forward to – especially as they lead to the weekend. Me...I’ve been trying to think positively about Fridays, but I keep getting pulled back into the black hole of the strange education system that seems to exist here. I am sure I’ve written about this before, but allow me to explain.

Each student gets their subjects for 3, 80 minute periods per week. The intelligent person in scheduling at this school has decided that the best way to place year 10s who are the lowest classes in that year (known as the last three bottom sets – me teaching the bottom of the bottom sets) is to have them have all their math classes on ONE day (for a total of 4 hours). Now, I’m sure any sane person would realize that having all you math classes on one day would be hard, boring, excruciatingly painful...for both the teacher and the students. So, I’ve been trying to come up with ways to make it more exciting. A couple of weeks ago, I had one of the periods devoted only to board games that were in the math cupboard – so they should be math based. Last week, they attempted to do a carousel (where one teacher would teach one lesson to the three classes on a rotary system). This week, I tried creating centres, which allowed me to teach the main parts of the chapter to smaller groups while students in the other centres worked on practicing their skills through worksheets or maths games. Sounds good, right? Well, period 1 went well. Period 3 began to slip and students spend more time off task. By period 4, I gave up on the idea and went back to the teacher at the board method – also as a way to give the student the consequence for not following the rules during the centres. This doesn’t mean that I have given up on centres, but I am going to revamp things next week to, again, try something new. Any suggestions for maths games would be greatly appreciated (I currently am using a “hockey” game for adding and subtracting numbers, and will be using “Yahtzee” to practice multiplication skills). I am also trying to think of a project I can give them so they can create their own maths games...any suggestions on what specifically would also be greatly appreciated.

Either way, I came home last night feeling like I have no idea, again, of what I am doing. Pedagogically speaking, having all that maths in one day DOES NOT MAKE SENSE, and yet the school thought there was nothing wrong with it. I feel as though all the good teaching strategies I have used in the past and was taught are being zapped from me as I have to “teach to the textbook” because their curriculum (a.k.a. “scheme of work”, or SOW) is based on the textbook. In fact, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, I received the SOW the week before school started telling me what I will be teaching within the first three weeks, then I test them and go on the next 3 weeks worth of work. At first, it sounded great – I know exactly where I need to be. However, because it is so much material in such a small period of time, I feel as though there is NO room for creativity and god forbid I go off the SOW! Heck, this week I was supposed to give a test to those year 10s on material that should have been taught to that point, but because it is so much stuff and they get so confused, I had to wait another week before I could do it. Meanwhile, my colleagues gave the test to the students even thought they hadn’t taught them everything on it...for fear of falling behind. The attitude in the school is, “Well, the students are used to writing tests that they don’t know how to do”. Hello? Does that make sense to ANYONE??? If so, could you explain it to me? Because I keep hearing alarm bells from what I know about teaching to know that this is NOT the way to teach.

With all this going through my head last night, I came home without going to the Warren for the weekly maths social. Part of that also deals with the fact that I don’t want to get used to going for a drink every time I get frustrated...I don’t want to pick up that habit. So, I came home and called Katie (thankfully she’s on vacation this week). I vented all that I’ve mentioned above along with my fears of losing the growth I’ve made in teaching since I began 5 years ago. She then mentioned one thing: when I decided to come to Britain, I knew I’d be teaching within their system of teaching – so I need to stop thinking about how I can change their system and work within the system and do the best that I can. And yes, it will be a struggle for me, but it will also allow me to see what works and what doesn’t, helping me to be a better teacher in the end. Although I felt ten times better after I heard that, I do still feel concerned that my professional development will become stunted here. However, being aware of that concern might cause me to force myself NOT to become stunted...if that makes sense.

Well, after all that rambling, I will just end this post to say that I spent the rest of my night vegging and watching “Runaway Bride” and “Pretty Woman” as they were on TV. I woke up this morning in a much better mood, doing my laundry to get it out of the way – only to find out that the washing machine didn’t spin my clothes entirely (as they were still REALLY wet). They are currently hanging outside in hopes of drying (this is my first time using the clothing line to dry my clothes...wish me luck).

P.S. I attempted to straighten my hair today. The straightening iron is not as strong as mine from home, so it took a LOT longer and it isn’t to my standards...but hey, it’s a change. It also shows how blonde I am now...yikes!!!

Interesting Fact:
A student said to me, “You’re from Canada, right? So, your president is Arnold Schwarzenegger...right?” I had to go on and explain to them that: 1) We don’t have a president...we have a prime minister like them. 2) Arnold isn’t the president, is the Governor of California. 3) The President of the US is Obama.

I relayed this to my fellow Canadians, and they said that a student then asked them who our queen was – and was shocked to hear her respond, “The same one as yours”.