Because I am clearly a sick individual (or maybe i’m just bored of kids not paying a god damn bit of attention to me and being verbally abused) I decided to do a half-day’s supply today in a Primary school. For a laugh, like. I felt like a complete fraud for my half-day and basically had no idea what I was doing, expectations etc even with an extremely detailed lesson plan. I overran on all the lessons and felt very odd talking to kids for literally an hour and them learning without having to do any writing. Weird.
I’ve helped out as an unofficial classroom assistant in a Primary before but i’ve never taught a whole class for lessons at a time on subjects I have no experience in; although I teach other subjects at Secondary level every day I work as a supply teacher, my experience at the school left me slightly all-at-sea as I had no ideas of how Primary teachers plan or actually teach.
Frighteningly, it appears every single lesson has to be planned out each day each week. At least I do not have to do that as a Secondary teacher- but I get the abuse I suppose to make up for that. A fair trade off? I’m not sure. Although I had to raise my voice quite a bit and the kids took a long time to obey me I felt in no way as stressed as I do leaving most of the Secondary schools I go to. I drove straight to McDonalds to celebrate with fats and sugars. Eee.
I took two classes and did break duty. The kids (sorry- children) I were looking after were Year 2’s (aged 6-7) and thusly were quite small; we all had fun being blown about in the playground as it drizzled. It was bizarre being surrounded by such small, easily squashable beings with such enthusiasm to learn. They all got given bananas to eat at break so you had a wet, windy playground filled with swarms of screaming, banana-toting infants. The small things like having to do up lots of zips and having to actually manhandle the kids to where I wanted them to go to (and being able to do so) was strange too.
I had to discuss the difference between public buildings and private buildings- I think by throwing in a “mixed” usage category I may have provided too much information for them (some of them got it) and with a group of older kids (Year 4’s 8-9) I had to read a story from which the kids had to pick out the adjectives and adjectival phrases. Minor problem there as I couldn’t remember what the fuck an adjective was (I thought maybe a describing word) and had no idea what an adjectival phrase was- bless them they helped me with my pronunciation.
I had to get a school dictionary and check the meaning before the kids came back from break. That’s right people, two degrees and I can’t remember what an adjective is. Don’t even ask about nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs etc…
In Primary supply are expected to mark all the work done that day; I gained amusement doing this- lots of unreadable handwriting and bad spelling. Not that I knew what I was doing again but never mind- sadly the same spellings that the kids were getting wrong are the same ones that Secondary-aged kids are getting wrong… Anyway, they want me back next Tuesday. I’m doing a full day at another Primary tomorrow. A glittering future of hilarity clearly beckons.
Mind-bogglingly beautiful kinetic sculpture made using ferrofluids and electromagnets YouTube: Magnetic sculpture
Taken from New Scientist: The stuff of dreams which has lots more cool videos such as things to do with dry ice and races across dilatant fluids.
