Cam’s Ramblings

Next Monday marks the beginning of term four, meaning that the past two weeks our students have had time off. Uni has also enjoyed a week off, which I must has has been much needed by many of us.

Yesterday I got home and found piece of mail from Uni, from the faculty office. I knew what it was, as a few friends had received the same mail. It was one of our assignments, which we had submitted for one of our core units about a month ago.

This is the first year this unit has ran, and as such there is a bit of confusion surrounding the aims, assessment and expectations. Our tutor has been quite vocal at times in her confusion surrounding the assessments, and we have spent a lot of time trying to work out exactly what it is we are going to submit.

So anyway, we thought we had figured out what to do, wrote the paper and put it in the slot. We got them back, and I know I was quite surprised to see my mark. The feedback I got seemed to contradict a lot of what we had been told in class. And it doesn’t bode well for the second task which I am in the middle of writing.

We have been told various things about how to present this paper, using subheadings, not using subheadings, it’s an essay, it’s a report, it’s an analysis… each week we are told something different. As always, there is a lesson in this for me to take into the classroom next year.

Any piece of work I ask my students to complete must not only be purposeful, but also be clear. I need to explicitly define what I expect, and if I am unsure I need to clarify what is rerquired. And if I can’t confirm what is expected, I can’t penalise students for using a variety of formats.

Here’s hoping I do slightly better on the second paper!

In the past week, I have had three job interviews at three very different schools. The first is a very large school, which has been around for about 6 years. The school has developed a lot of its own integrated curriculum ideas for students in years 7 and 8, with an innovative program being run with the year 9 students. The second is a much more established school, with fewer students but over the past few years has been involved in setting up a new school in a nearby suburb. The third school is an independent school down the road from where I live, is only three years old and is going into Year 9 next year, with plans to work upto Year 12 in th next four years.

Last Thursday night I recieved a phone call, and subequent job offer, off the first school. I had every intention to accept this offer.

While I was out, I received a voice mail from the second school, the message saying that they would call me back today. I never got another call.

Friday morning, I contacted the third school to inform them that I had this first offer, and as I was very interested in their school I was wondering where I was standing in terms of an offer. They informed me that I was going to be contacted later in the day, with a job offer.

This left me confused, the two schools which had offered me a job were two of the schools I had placed on the top of my ‘wish list’. All day Friday I agonised over this decision, the state school vs the independent, the developed vs the developing, many of these issues I worked through in my head.

So I suppose I can now officially say that Friday afternoon I contacted one of the Principals to accept their offer of employment. I am now employed as a Mathematics and Information Technology teacher at Kambrya College in Berwick (http://www.kambryacollege.com/). I chose the state school which is well developed, has an abundance of resources surrounding it and what I hope will provide me with a supporting team environment for the first few years of my teaching, possibly with the view of building a career.

So there you go. I am now (graduation pending, of course!) a member of the teaching profession.

Updated 20th September – I have been able to upload my most recent Interview Portfolio, hopefully it resembles my last. Head to ‘Interview Portfolio’ on the nav bar above to check it out.

We are now beginning to reach what will be my favorite part of the application process, and that is the interview stage. So far, I have been invited to attend an interview at two different schools over the next week, and am immensely looking forward to meeting the principals, along with some of the other staff for a chat.

I have also been working more on the portfolio, the newest version has been uploaded to the ‘Interview Portfolio’ page – use the nav bar up the top.

At last I am ready to show off my ‘first release’ of my Interview Portfolio. While it is nowhere near complete, I have decided to post it in this environment for a number of reasons.

First of all, I have begun to send out applications. Included in my application is a link to this blog, and I would like any prospective employers to be able to have a look at what I have done thus far. I hope that I will be able to provide a weekly update to my Portfolio, so it doesn’t look too incomplete for too long.

Secondly, in our Mentor Group today we were spending some time looking at portfolios, and as I have done a reasonable amount of work on mine, I was asked to share some of my thoughts and ideas. To give people even more chance to have a look at what I have done, I have decided to post it. I trust that anyone who does view it will not ’steal’ my ideas, instead use what I have done as inspiration to build their own masterpiece.

So please feel free to have a look at what I have done by clicking on the ‘Interview Portfolio‘ link above. And please, leave me a comment. I would love to know what you think, what you like, what you don’t, and any suggestions you could give me to improve what I have done so far.

Forrest Gump once said “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.”

I couldn’t agree with this statement more. We could be really picky and say that yes, you do know exactly what you are eating from your box of chocolates. Mostly because of the little pictures and descriptions you usually find in the lid or on the bottom of the box. But the analogy I think Gump was trying to get to was one of those boxes where they don’t give you that information. You just have to guess. And if you are allergic to nuts, then good luck!

But that’s going way off topic. I was going to try and steer this post back toward the fact that the Assignment Roller coaster is back in full swing. You should see my desk at home, I have textbooks, readings, journal articles and the like everywhere. I think that somewhere under there is my printer (note to self: FIND PRINTER!).

Fortunatly I have a poretty cruisy semester, as long as I complete one assignment per week. In the week ending today, I am to complete my Diversity assignment. It’s nowhere near done, but getting there. And starting tomorrow I have a literature review and case study to do for Student Wellbeing.

Once these are out of the way, I have my favorite subject to focus on – GAME! Anyone who I have spoken to of late will know that ‘Games is the kick-arseiest subject ever!’ Allow me to explain. Our fist assignment was a 750 report on a game we ran at our practicum schools. Easy. Our second assignment is running a game with our class at uni. Easy. Our third assignment is making a poster about an online game. Easy. The fourth assignment is marking everyone else’s games and posters. EASY!

And get this, we learn bugger all, besides some cool classroom activities. Week one was all the administrative stuff, getting assignments etc. Week two Cathy, the tutor, ran a game with us. Weeks three – seven are our presentations. And week eight we mark other posters. And the biggest suprise of all, there are only TWELVE people in the class. I don’t get it……

So anyway, until I’m back teaching in October my great insights into the classroom will kind of stop here. I know I was planning on using my Student Site (http://mrdenham.edublogs.org) during this last placement, but the classes I had didn’t really allow me to do so. So here’s hoping I can on my next lot of rounds. I really would like to see if it works before running with it next year.

But that’s enough from me. I have an assignment to write.

I’ll give you a hint. It was me. Okay, that wasn’t really a hint, more of a give away. But still…

I must admit, I am very happy with myself on this effort. I am feeling more confident about getting a job now, and am even more excited than previously about the coming few months. I have gathered some major evidence for my portfolio, and am looking forward to sharing that soon. Hopefully over the next week I will have a draft I am happy to publish on this site.

And until then, it’s back to work. I have a curriculum day tomorrow which should be interesting, then post-practicum drinks with my special lady in town to celebrate. Have a good weekend!

When I last poted, over a week ago, I posted about my success in using the smart board to teach pie graphs to year 7 students. SInce then, my students have sat their tests on the topic, recieved their marks and are now on to the next topic of measurement.

So today I had another smart board lesson for them, based around using scale. Basically, we made sure students knew how to use a ruler, read other scales (such as thermometers) then look at measuring long distances. We began with questions along the lines of “if the arrow is 20m long, how long is the bridge”, where I would display an arrow and a bridge.

So we worked through several examples, and as commented by one of the SSO stff who came into the class in the last 15 minutes, I “Had them eating out of my hands”, which I must admit I am just a little bit proud of.

I have been quite lucky to have access to the Smart Boards as much as I have on this placement, I’ve enjoyed having the freedom to play around with them and getting to know how they work. If you want a copy of any f my lessons I’ve created please leave a comment and I will send you what I’ve made. Eventually I hope to have an entire library of notes available to call upon as needed.

But until then, I suppose I shall just create.

I’ve had an interesting two days at school. Allow me to set the scene.

I am placed at a Prep-Year 12 school in Melbourne’s outer south east, and am teaching year 7 and 8 students with a very good maths teacher, Ms. W. Ms. W is also quite knowledgeable in things IT, so is able to hold quite a good conversation if and when I want to discuss matters which relate to my second teaching method. Which, admittedly, isn’t often.

Anyway, most schools in the local area are either Prep-Grade 6 or Year 7-Year 12. Ours is the only Prep-12 school, so we take in quite a number of new students at Year 7, as well as those who are just progressing up to teh next level at our school. A typical part of any Grade 6 program in the area is a ‘discovery day’, where the grade 6 students come to high school and spend a day with some of the teachers and starting to get a feel for how it works.

So on Tuesday at recess, the coordinator of one such day came in, as one of the planned teachers who would be taking sessions with grade 6 kids was no longer available. The session which required covering was an IT based one. My name was thrown forward as someone who could take such a session, as I would (in theory) have complete control over what I actually did. But it was instead decided that Ms. W would take the session, and I would take all of her classes.

So Wednesday rolls around, and I am teaching all five periods. I was already taking two of the classes, the other three were just a bonus! The day started out well, but went downhill from there. Although I did have a CRT in the room with me the whole day, I must admit, it didn’t help much. My first class for the day almost lost me my voice. My second class pushed me to the limit. Thankfully I had recess next. Ahhh, the new coffee machine in the staffroom is bliss!

Period three saw me in the computer lab, and this class ran quite smoothly. My fourth class however was a completely different story. No matter what I tried to do with this class, I just couldn’t make them do anything. There were, as in most classes, two or three kids who wanted to work. But most spent the lesson yelling, fighting, pushing, kicking balls and trying to figure out who should be dating who. No kidding, one conversation I caught was “…who’d ever want to f*** you?”, followed by “It’s OK _____, I’d willingly f*** you any day”. These types of statements from 13 year old girls!

So the end of the lesson came, I knew who had done what work but now the true test came. I sat in front of the door and waited. I waited. And I waited some more. After several minutes of listening to everyone yell “shut up!’ at the top of their lungs I finally heard something the vaguelly resembelled silence. I said, in a rather quiet manner, that I was waiting for silence before anyone went anywhere. Another few minutes later I got what I was after. So I dismissed half the class and kept the troublesome ones some more. Again the yelling started. I found it amusing that the same ones who were telling others to be quiet were the same ones who kept making the noise. I think it may have been about 15 minutes into lunch that I finally got silence, expressed my disgust at the group and let them go.

Speaking of lunch, I have never had a more peaceful 25 minutes sitting in a classroom all by myself. I relished the silence, because I knew period five was coming. And it was not going to be pretty. Needless to say it wasn’t, it was very much like period four. Except this time, the kids just left once the day was over. They didn’t wait for any indication that they could leave, they just left.

End of Wednesday.

Start of Thursday.

I was only to teach one class today, for a double period. I had decided to spend the first lesson covering the final key concept in their current topic, and the second lesson revisiting a skill many of them had failed to learn properly. Fortunatelyfor me, the second lesson was so incredibly appropriate for one of my new favorite classroom tools, the Interactive Whiteboard.

I was teaching the class how to draw a pie graph. So we had our raw data, converted it into percentages and then into the amount of ‘pie’ we needed to fill (reminding the kids that a circle has got 360 degrees, which does not equal the 100 per cent we also have. They didn’t quite get it at first). With my electro-protractor which was the size of Paris, I could very easily show the kids how to measure the angles and draw them into their graphs. And they loved it. The example graph we were building saw us needing six sections of pie. After I showed them how to manipulate the protractor on the board, I had twelve kids come up and fill in teh pie for me.

The kids loved it. So I left school on Wednesday feeling pretty down after a bad day, but I managed to regroup, write this great whiteboard program and left today feeling on top of the world.

It just goes to show that teaching is one hell of a roller coaster. And it can all change with a single lesson. The other thing I have taken away from this is the importance of planning. I spent a few hours last night thinking of how I could present this lesson to students. After some thinking and some other ideas, I finally decided on my approach, and created my materials. Here’s hoping they remember it for the test!

And I must admit, I could not be happier! I have returned to the same school I attended for my rounds earlier this year. I left from there not feeling the greatest, and with quite a list of areas for me to think about. It is now several months later, I have returned to a new supervising teacher, new classes and new students.

Today I just observed two classes and worked out what I intend to teach my Year 7’s. They are almost at the end of their current unit on Data, which will be wrapped up by next Thursday. This class has 5 periods of maths per week, 2 x doubles and 1 x single in a computer lab. So pretty much every lesson I have to come up with something interesting and more than just bookwork, ‘cos 2 hours of that is boring. Not only for the students, but also for me.

So I have come up with my Data Olympics. I am writing five ‘events’ which students will take part in, which will serve as useful revision for them. I am intending to include topics taken from the textbook, but include them in games and other fun activities. I don’t know exactly how I will pull it off as yet, but I’m sure I will.