A New School Has Begun

The new school year began last week, and, with it, some changes at school. Some of the changes relate to my direct responsibilities and others relate to observations I have made.

Firstly, how have my responsibilities changed from last school year to this school year? Last year, my main responsibility was to teach three English classes. Most of my time was occupied here. With what time I had remaining, I assisted with an assortment of assignments ranging from coaching the school’s debate team to fulfilling various requests from teachers. Basically, my focus was to teach learners English.

This school year, my focus has shifted from largely focusing on the learners to devoting more of my time to working more directly with the teachers. For example, I’m now co-teaching two English classes with two different teachers. This allows me to work with them one-on-one planning lessons, brainstorming teaching and classroom management strategies, and reflecting on how classes went. I’m also facilitating professional development workshops with the teachers. We just had one the other day about using Microsoft Excel to set up a gradebook. It was great! Aside from teaching inside and outside the classroom, I’m working on the school’s library. The library has come a long way over the last few months with the addition of several thousand books and its organization. The next steps there include training learners to be Library Helpers and utilizing the library to capitalize on school’s recent addition of a reading period to the school’s timetable*.

Since the school year has started, I have also made a few observations; some I hoped for and others I wasn’t anticipating. For example, one that I was hoping for was that the learners would be familiar to my teaching style. This translates into actively participating in class, following classroom procedures, and learners speaking at an audible volume (the learners spoke so softly when I first started in the classroom that I had a difficult time hearing them). I had heard from previous volunteers that it’s much easier teaching the second year than it is during the first. So far, this has rung true for me. Last year, it took all of Term 1 and most, if not all, of Term 2 for the learners to follow procedures. On the first day of school this year, the learners didn’t need much prodding for them to remember. After a couple of days, it was smooth sailing.

The other day, I had a confirmation of an observation I made during the previous school year regarding attention spans. In my Grade 5 class last year, the learners could concentrate with minimal distraction for about 40 minutes. Well, the teacher who’s teaching Grade 5 English this year was going to be out for the day, so I said I could cover the class. The class was going fairly well for a while, but then a few learners started talking, a learner got out of his seat without permission, and learners started asking to use the toilet. I glanced down at my watch to make note of the time and sure enough it had been about 40 minutes since the class started.

One pleasant and unexpected observation I have made so far was the ease with which the learners have understood my accent. In my Grade 7 class, I have four new learners who transferred in from other schools. I noticed they were having a hard time understanding me, so I tried asking the learner sitting next to them for help. The learner repeated what I said and the learner who couldn’t understand then got it. This was happening again and again with the new learners. At first, I didn’t understand why this was happening because my other learners could understand me just fine. And then it hit me – my accent! These new learners weren’t used to my accent. I then remembered things I did last year like clearly and crisply pronouncing each part of words and slowing down my pace. Once I did this, the learners started having an easier time. There was a cool transformation that I hadn’t realized took place with my learners last year – their ability to understand my accent – until I was with new learners.

These are some of the observations I have made at school and it’s only been two weeks. I’m curious to see how the next few months go – both with my direct responsibilities and with observations I make with the learners. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the majority will be positive.

Here's a fun video I took of a few learners from my school having fun "sledding" while I was walking home at the end of the day.  Ahhh, to be a kid again...

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* timetable – class schedule