On Friday I went and visited the school. I met my associate teacher, all the kids and some of the other staff.

I watched a bit of a maths lesson, but then the class had to go and do technology, which is taught by another teacher in another room, so I didn’t follow them to that, I stayed behind and talked to my associate about lesson planning and behaviour management.

For obvious reasons I’m not supposed to talk about my placement in any great detail, but I will say that it’s definitely going to be challenging – probably more challenging than the placements some of my friends are going on. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t more nervous now than I was before I visited.

That said though, I’m still looking forward to it! I suspect that this will be the hardest of my three placements, so I’m choosing to look at it as being good practice for the other two. Perhaps this is exactly the kind of dynamic I¹ need.

In other news, I also found out that the school is doing their drama production next term, which I’m very excited about! Hello awesome timing! I’m not sure what show it is, but I did hear that it involves Hercules. My associate also said that because there are quite a few kids in the class involved in it, their Social Studies focus will be about myths and legends, which sounds really cool. :)

1. Someone who tends to be quite quiet and “too nice” [↩]

Tomorrow morning I get to meet the teacher who will be my associate for my first placement. I spoke to her on the phone earlier in the week and arranged to come and sit in on a bit of her class and basically see how everything is run, before I go and jump in the deep end in three weeks time!

As part of our preparation for placement, we have to fill out a form with our personal information, skills and areas we would like to focus on developing. In addition to other stuff, I said that

At the moment I do not have any preconceived ideas about which age group I prefer, and so am very excited to be teaching Year 8.

It’s true, I don’t, and I am (although I would have said that about any age group, I’m looking forward to teaching ALL OF THEM!), but rereading it just now made me wonder whether it sounds insincere. I hope not. Oh well, I suppose my genuine interest in teaching this age group might be something better demonstrated than written about. :)

I also said that I learn best by observing something first and then trying it myself, and that I am concerned about teaching maths, as I was never very good at it at school. I know that sounds kind of like I’m focusing on a lot of negative stuff, but if she doesn’t know the areas I need the most help with, how can I expect her to help me with them!?

Today I completed the first of my 101 in 1001! I bought a pair of flat brown boots, identical to the ones on the left.

I never imagined myself suiting this style of shoe, since I have kind of chubby legs, but once I tried them on with jeans tucked into them, I was pleasantly surprised! I rather liked them!

I don’t know if I’d wear them with a skirt or not, I think they’d look out of proportion, but we shall see…

P.S: Thanks to everyone who commented on my last post telling me that some of my 101 things were duplicates! I THINK I have fixed them all now. I hope!