~Some Stuff Out of the Way
2005-09-13 - 7:55 p.m.

Heh. Student Teacher's report was due today and I felt like I was back in uni, doing everything at the last minute. I think I wrote a good report, though. I focused on what he could do and what he was beginning to learn. In my summary comments, I noted things he was working on (as in, needed to work on), but basically was very positive without being flattering. He's only in his first year of his education course, after all!

He's got a looong way to go and I think it might take him a while to really get the hang of discipline, but he started with a very hard grade. I don't feel that I really got my head around discipline until my second year of teaching! Even then, my grade in general was much better than the one I have now, so I've still learned a lot about it this year. I feel a lot more confident when it comes to controlling tough students, not just alrightish classes. However, Student Teacher will definitely be a good teacher, he'll just need the full four years plus the notorious "you learn more in your first year than in all your time at uni" initial year.

Well, the report was due and I finished it off today. At lunchtime Uni Supervisor arrived. Me does not like Uni Supervisor very much. Uni Supervisor thinks far too much of himself and is far too condescending - treats me like I need a lot of advice. I don't need a lot of advice and any advice I do need I don't want from some self-congratulatorily magnanimous stranger. I was prepared for him today. Looked very self-assured, agreed with him a lot in an "of course!" kind of way and kept my look neutral when he was trying to be impressive. I also disagreed with him about something and found myself backed up by Simon. It was great! *grins wickedly*

VUT's teacher report simply has "satisfactory" or "not satisfactory" as a grade for passing/not passing "preservice" teachers. He had to get our student teacher coordinator to come up with some feedback and together they came up with a suggestion of having a scale on which to grade the students to give some idea of how they were going. It seemed wrong to them not to be able to acknowledge when a student was doing brilliantly or only just satisfactory. I couldn't keep quiet. There's enough pressure on student teachers just to get through a lesson, let alone a whole block of teaching. They're trying to juggle their timing, speech, wording, manner, discipline, control, content, questioning, discussing, observation, note-taking, assisting all in one lesson. They also need to do very detailed lesson plans (I do about three lines to describe a lesson, if a description is needed at all), write evaluative notes on each lesson, write in their reflective journal each day, complete a special school-based curriculum project and, goodness, somewhere in all of that learn how to control a class and maybe even teach. If they manage all of that, then they pass. Who needs the pressure of knowing they'll only have a 6/10, of hoping they'll have more?

Beside, how is a number indicitive of their skills, strengths and weaknesses - and personality, which plays such a fundamental part of being a successful teacher? Now, I had to write *thinks* three blocks of comments in three sections, a summary for each section and an overall comment. 13 comments. You'd think that'd give a good indication of how they were going, wouldn't you? Certainly, it's difficult to be critical with someone you've worked with and encouraged, but I don't think any teachers are interested in sending on a preservice teacher with good reviews when there are concerns. We know the importance of picking things up early and setting students on the right track. Hehe. I think we swayed him a little. See, he's just the kind of guy who sounds all confident and self-important until you present a reasonable differing opinion and then he'll respond with "Oh yes, that's true, too..." hehehehe. I'm actually proud of myself for not letting myself feel put on the back foot by him. He's not an awful person, he's very well-meaning. He just rubs me up the wrong way.

Now I've just got my PRP...performance review thingy...to do with my leading teacher. My own thingy like Student Teacher had to do! Bleh. Just haven't had the physical wellbeing to get my head around that.