Frontenac round 2

Being back at Frontenac for the second time was a wonderful experience. Although it definitely started off on a little bit of a hectic note. Day 1 was of course a snow day, with most of the teachers not present in the school. Surprisingly all of the student teachers made it though! I still hadn’t had a solid confirmation of what classes I would be teaching, but I was told when I got there that I would have 2 grade 10 science classes with one teacher, and a senior math class with another one (since I still needed a senior class for my practicum requirements.) However I later discovered the teacher I was placed with for the math class actually had a grade 9 class that period, so it was a scramble for me to try and find another math teacher with a senior class who was willing to have me in their class. However, I found a teacher with a grade 12 calculus class who welcomed me into his class, so that was a good experience! It was definitely a different experience teaching a senior math class, as I’ve only ever taught 9/10 classes in the past. There were essentially no classroom management issues, but the content was more challenging of course.

I observed the calculus teacher for a few days, and it was a much different teaching style from any I had observed before. He’s clearly very intelligent, and goes through lessons quickly with lots of time for individual practice. However, I found whenever he would finish the lesson; a lot of the students would just leave the classroom. There seemed to be a lack of motivation in the classroom, but they general attitude seemed to be that they were grade 12s, and that we should let them do what they want. I was a little nervous to teach them, because I know my teaching style is different and I didn’t want to fall into the trap of becoming my associate teacher. He gave me a few suggestions the first few days, and then at the third day he came up at the end of class and said “you don’t need me anymore,” (which was nice to hear, even though I know it’s far from the truth.) He told me that one of the important things you can do as a teacher is to want to be there, and that will come out in your teaching, and that it was obvious that I wanted to teach the students and was super comfortable in front of the classroom. He was really supportive and it was a great learning experience.

My other host teacher (in the grade 10 science classes) gave me essentially total freedom and control of his classroom from the moment I got there. He was in the middle of the climate change unit, and asked me one the snow day if I wanted to teach the next day (although he didn’t give me a lot of information about what he had covered so far.) It was interesting having the freedom to do whatever I wanted, but I would have like a little bit of feedback at times. Even after making the unit test and asking him if he wanted to see it first, or check over my my marking after I had done it, he always said no. I’ve never had a teacher who didn’t want to see how I was evaluating the students.

He was a very interesting teacher, who I don’t think shared a lot of views that the rest of the science department did. He would rarely eat lunch in the science office with the rest of the teachers, and told me once that it was because he couldn’t stand to listen to the conversations that they had about students, and some of the negative talks that occurred in there. I found his perspective was always interesting to hear about, and he often make me think differently about things.

After the climate change unit he decided we would do optics next since it would give me some experience in some physics teaching. That was fun, and I think I actually grew to like optics more than I ever did when I was a student. We did a few POEs, which the students seemed to enjoy. (They’d never heard of the secret vote of science before!)

Classroom management in this class was definitely more challenging, as we had several kids with ADD, and there were taps in front of every other seat. So the taps were on and off all the time in the lesson. I learned to just let that happen for the most part though, because if it wasn’t the tap they would find something else. I developed great relationships with these students though, and had an awesome time.

Tomorrow I’m off to Ecuador for another adventure, and I’ll try to post there whenever I can get internet! (I have more to say about my time at Frontenac as well, but I’ve got a flight to catch in a few hours so that’ll have to wait for another time.)