This week I underwent a transformation. I am no longer a student looking for the nearest bar with drink promos (although I am broke like one). I am no longer a retail worker thinking of the day I wont have to worry about making a sale. I am no longer someone working towards a job that I have dreamt of since I was a kid. This week, I became Ms Dalton. A real life teacher (in training. But they don't need to know that).
As part of my course I am teaching two days a week in my school, and although it only amounts to 4 classes a week, I can tell you, its still terrifying. I didn't realise how scared I would be! I thought I would go in, like my lecturers have been saying, and I would be thinking about how to include the weaker students, or how to make my lessons accessible to visual learners, and preoccupying myself with Assessment For Learning procedures (don't ask. Seriously difficult to explain), but I didn't do any of these. I went in and stressed out over them all staring at me, and the codes I had to put into the computer to get to the internet, how to mark them into the roll online, and getting them to simply stay on track and not go off on a 'I have a personal story' tangent which 12 year olds like to do. I won't even go into the panic that ensues when one of them asks you a question you didn't anticipate and don't really know the answer to! Christ. I realised the basics were all I was going to learn this week, and I was pretty ok with that.
Friday morning, I suddenly wasn't ok with my lazy basics. The loud staff room phone rang at about half ten in the morning, and my co-operating teacher answered it. She said the name of my newly allocated supervisor, and I nearly got sick. The second day of teaching, my supervisor had decided to give me the only assessment I would receive for the whole term. I didnt eat a thing all day with the fear. Every little bit of self doubt I had about my ability to do this job was screaming in my head, and I didnt want to even think that she may tell me that I was utterly horrific.Criticism I wanted, as I will admit I don't know what I am doing second day into the job, but there is the fact that some people are not meant to be teachers. I couldn't face the idea that maybe I was one of them.
She sat in on my lesson with her little black book of notes and watched me give my first ever lesson to this group of second years. I tried my best to ignore her, and I did most of the time, but then I would get a glimpse of her writing in the book and my stomach would turn. I did the best I could. I followed the tips of fellow teachers in the staff room to smile, keep relaxed, put the learning objectives on the board and keep referring back to them, keep the students disciplined without shouting, and follow the lesson plan. In the end, it turns out I didn't need to worry much at all. Apparently, stress is a good thing. As I have been so nervous and conscious of myself as a teacher, I pay attention to what I am doing in the class, and I am ticking most teaching boxes. I came out of her feedback meeting with a massive smile on my face and finally thinking, after 6 months abroad, 2 years of saving, 2 months of scary lectures about all the stuff teachers have to do in a class, and years of thinking about it, that I actually can do this job. It turned out that the shock of a supervision on a second day was possibly the best thing that could have happened to me.
Now to survive next week, and the next 18 months after that.
Amy.
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