First Year Madness

So I took on my most feared moment teaching. Well one of the many most feared moments. Starting, and more importantly, completing an art project with all 52 kids.  The result is bigger than I thought it would be, almost recognisable as a kiwi, and it looks pretty stunning high up on our walls. I'll take it as a win but it was not without a fair amount of chaos and stress. This jigsaw piece was bound to be a logistical nightmare - so I did my best to pre-empt the drama by carefully cutting out, laminating and numbering squares, then cutting out and number more squares, than matching said squares together, then trying to keep track of which student had which square. Inevitably we still lost some (there are a few that were completed last minute by yours truly when I realised the pieces were lost in the class room abyss). The finished kiwi. 120 little pastel images pieced together to create a pretty striking art work. Reflections from this project (because I do nothing...

So I made the decision to take on the post graduate certificate run by Unitec's Mindlab all around digital and collaborative learning. This course sounds perfect for helping me to take advantage of the environment I am teaching in this year, and helping me to enhance student learning with the available resources in our giant classroom. Most people I mentioned this too thought I had officially lost it, because it isn't as though I am finding this whole teaching business hard enough already. But the time spent on this learning I think will pay forward straight into the classroom, into my teaching practice and most importantly into the student's learning. Our first session was a lot of getting to terms with Unitec's systems, as well as using Google + (which I should have already been comfortable with but was most definitely not). We then moved on to discussing knowledge and learning, and what those words that we throw around so easily actually mean. What is knowledge?...

I teach at a school in South Auckland, with 52 students in year 5 and 6, and 2 other teachers who support and challenge me (often at the same time). Here will be a record of my development this year, both within the classroom as well as at the MindLab course run by Unitec (and also at home where I spend hours trying to plan and yet still end up feeling like I'm on the back foot in the classroom). It will also be a place for some reflecting, pondering, brain storming and general learning.  So far, I have survived 8 whole weeks of teaching (a fact that doesn't seem real even as I tell myself it), and I have hope that I can make it through many more! Hopefully this blog will give me a way to explore my pedagogical beliefs and practices further, and figure out who I want to be as a teacher and how I can grow in the right direction. One of my favourite quotes about education comes from Malcolm X: "Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who...