Most teachers have probably had the experience of
substituting at some point in their lives.
It’s kind of a stressful thing, in my opinion.
I came to school Thursday 30 minutes late because it was
raining, and I have learned if it is raining everyone is going to be late. I
was right. There were only 2 other
teachers at school and then only two more showed up with in the next hour. So I was obviously asked to substitute. They were being nice to me by giving me the
older kids, years 7 and 8. The
difference between substituting here and substituting in the states, is that
here there are no lesson plans left for me and I have no ideas of what to teach
the children or what I should be doing with them. You are literally just thrown into a class
with the kids. So I go into the class
and think, “wow they literally have nothing to do and I don’t even know where
to start because this is four of my classes combined together into one and
their levels are so incredibly different that I can’t really do my normal
lessons with them.” So I did a little
reading exercise with them at the beginning of the class, for the first 30
mins. Then it was the break, which gave me time to try and think of something
creative to do with them for the next three hours after the break was
over. I came up with a few games that I
thought I could adjust to fit the levels of all the students and one new
concept that I could teach them together as a class that would be new enough to
be interesting but easy enough that even the lower level kids could get
it. So for the next two hours we played
games, which was fun. Kind of
exhausting, but fun! And then I told them we were done with games and it was
time to read. One of the kids started saying something to me about singing
songs, and I thought, “ok, we can sing songs.”
What I didn’t understand was that by singing songs he was telling me
they were going to do a talent show. So
the students all moved their chairs to make rows around the front of the class,
or “the stage,” if you will. Then it
began! They sang so many songs. Samoan
pop songs, Samoan rap songs, Samoan church songs, English Disney songs, that
Hallelujah song, and then my personal favorite, JUSTIN BEIBER! Yes. Two girls led the whole class word for word
in “Baby, Baby, Baby, ooooh.” I may have
been laughing a little more than what is normally appropriate at a talent show,
but they were just so darn cute. I don’t
know what exactly this says about my classroom management skills, but I know that
I had fun and I think they learned at least a little something.
No comments:
Post a Comment