Hard to believe that today marks a full month in Australia! It feels like I just got here yesterday, and yet like I've been here forever. I had two year 5 boys asking me today if I'm going to be coming back after I leave, and it was honestly hard to answer. I would love to come back here, but I don't know that my future lies in Australia; at least not permanently. It is strange to think, though, what it would be like if I did come back -- all the year 2's, 4's, and 5's would have grown up on me and a new batch of primary school kids would have moved in. Getting the chance to work with boys in all different levels (from reception to year 12, basically) really gets me thinking about what it's like to grow up and what these younger boys will be like a few years from now. But if I tried to put all my thoughts into this blog it would probably crash my computer...
I progressed downwards through the grade levels today, starting off in year 12 and ending in year 2 (I actually should have ended in year 7, but I "forgot" to go...woops). The year 12's are studying epistemology (how we know what we know), so they were watching Inception today. That movie gave me a headache when I saw it last summer, and today was no different -- it was definitely a relief to move on to year 5! They were working on their Jesus pictures and a math design project, so I got to move around the room and see what they were up to. They're really a great class. This one boy Angus (an unfortunate name but a great kid) was talking to me for a while, about anything from wetting the bed to Chuck E Cheese to Jesus. I spent two lessons with that class and had plenty of laughs with them, as I served as part helper and part distraction, which always suits me well there.
After year 5, I had a double lesson with the year 10's for religion. They were pretty much just working on an assignment the whole lesson; that's not how I would prefer to have them spend the class (I'd rather keep it more active, teaching the kids and talking with them, not having them sit there and do busywork), but I think it will work out. I'm going to do a lesson with them tomorrow to expand on everything they worked on today, so hopefully that'll go well. They're not a bad class -- except for the two that I've named Dumb and Dumber, they're pretty good kids (just not always all that motivated). Even though I have a lot more fun with the primary school kids, I do enjoy working with the older ones, and will definitely be looking more into the PACT (post-grad teaching) program when I get back to PC.
Lesson 6 came around, and I headed to my year 2 class. I prepared a slideshow for them about America, and they were all excited to see what I had to share with them. I did a mini history lesson and then talked about stuff like American sports, weather, and my dog. They were thrilled with the pictures of the snow (it never gets below freezing in Adelaide) and were definitely confused about driving on the other side of the road. I forgot how much 8 year olds want to share with you, though! Every 5 seconds another hand was going up, and I got a whole host of questions and comments that only little kids could think of. You never know what they're going to come out with!
No comments:
Post a Comment