Watch Your Back

Back in the saddle and teaching for real (instead of all that nambypamby "observing and cooperative teaching" flimflam).

The back is pain-free and my leg is only occasionally making me sit down. Listen up class - if you ever put a "tweak" in your back, pay heed to these learning outcomes: don't fanny about with it, get it seen to, rest it for a couple of days. A disc-prolapse is the most depressing pain I've ever experienced.

Anyways, student teaching is a complete feckin' nightmare. You are expected to really teach. This means producing between two and four lesson plans for every day of the working week and - although I knew this before I started - the reality is still like a punch on the nose.

Following every lesson, you get your feedback which essentially consists of being told what you're not doing right. Most of the "correct" alternatives can only seemingly be gained with experience - so essentially I am getting a near-constant stream of criticism for being inexperienced.

So loads of work, much of it being pulled apart. Twelve to thirteen hour days. Waking at 5am and not getting back to sleep. Learning a lot, but feeling persistently stupid. Did you know that sound is quicker these days ? Apparently it's not 330m/s any more, it's now 340m/s. And even when I'm on "home-turf" (electricity) my teaching is too complex. Don't (ever) try to teach internal resistance as being essentially a voltage divider circuit. And don't (ever) talk about energy if you're teaching about forces. Current is always big-I never little-i. Never use upper case on the board. And don't write with a red marker on a whiteboard. Don't go too fast. Don't go too slow. Share your learning outcomes. Check your success criteria.

(My teacher colleagues are actually excellent to work with - knowledgable, sympathetic and professional. Direct with feedback - which is what I asked for).

However, being in on-line touch with my fellow students is saving my sanity as it seems to be a common thread. At least I haven't burst into tears on the morning train, and I have yet to fail a crit (OK, so I've yet to sit one but we'll gloss over that), I have yet to have any pupils swearing at me or make lewd comments about my breasts. I have also yet to seriously question my being here. Yet.

However. Ouch. It hurts.

A Bit Of A Nerve

I can't teach.

Having finally got off the ground this week with a couple of "real" lessons, having subsequently been given some good feedback (along with the mandatory Areas For Improvement), the tweak I put in my lower back last week has finally reached out and grabbed the main nerve bundle serving my left leg.

The pain in my leg is feckin' terrible, primarily when I am standing or walking: two of the main physical activities required of a teacher. This has stopped my teaching in its tracks.

Consultations with both my GP and my local Chiropracter have resulted in a diagnosis of a disc prolapse along with a course of diclofenac and amitriptyline. I am sore, worried and grumpy - not least because I have a "crit" in a couple of weeks time and I'm going to be severely limited as to the amount of teaching practice I can actually complete.

The past couple of days have seen me laid up at home, lying on the sofa doing lesson plans and watching old DVD's on my new upscaling DVD player (try watching Bladerunner on a decent HD telly - top notch).

However, I'm now left with a bit of a dilemma. I can haul my ass back to school as soon as possible (in order to get as much experience as I can) and maybe make it worse; or take more time off in order to fully recover but get heehaw teaching practice before my crit.

The nightmare scenario is of course that I can't complete this placement at all and fail to graduate this year.

Oh, arse.

Unmiserable

Glasgow was awarded the 2014 Commonwealth Games on Friday at around 7 minutes before the lunchtime bell rang.

I know this because the S3 Physics class - who were about to start the Health Physics module (thermome'ers an' that) - asked if they could be told what the result was when it was announced. Bugger it (I guess) the incumbent teacher thought - let's just fire up the radio and listen to it live.

So we did.

Twenty minutes of "comment" from the usual Radio Scotland worthies....eh ? Hang on. Twenty twitching teenagers held in raptures by Dougie Bleedin Vipond ? But aye, sure enough not a peep. I did have to confiscate a mobile phone (school rules) but was it out in order for me to be videoed getting happy slapped ? Nope - it was out to record the announcement. I felt like a complete arse.

And then the announcement itself. Now, having spent the last god-knows-how-many-years in the professional company of right-on (and some not so right-on) adults, I had naturally (and involuntarily) been through the miserablist approach of considering how much better the cash might have been spent developing sport at grassroots level (if that was really the aim). I mentally tuttutted at the notion of Empire/Commonwealth and reflected on the fact that if we hadn't spent the last few centuries plundering the homelands of other nations then they might be in a position to produce slicker videos (and have better, more "athlete-friendly" infrastructure) blah-de-blah-de-blah.

Kids ? They don't give a monkey's nudger about all that. And to be part of their unmiserable celebration, to see the fire in the eyes of those pupils who do some sort of sport (and those now thinking of taking it up) starting to believe that they might be part of something big was one of those "deeply rewarding" moments we've been promised repeatedly during the formal University part of the course.

Whoopin' and a a-hollerin', the kids were overjoyed at this annnouncement and their completely unselfconscious celebrations will stay with me for a long time. As things are getting tough on the workload front, a timely wee reminder of why we're doing this.

Feeling The (Latent) Heat

Having been lobbied by my numerous readers, I have finally managed to get reblogged.

Things have been quite quiet on the blog front, since the month of October was split asunder by a sneaky wee week off. Seven days in the arborial splendour of Center Parcs down Sherwood Forest way - some lesson planning being done between the archery, swimming, Turkish hamam and Kronenburg 1664. How do you make the concept of latent heat and change-of-state interesting to a bunch of 14 year olds ?

I settled on the idea of using reusable heat packs which use the latent heat produced by the crystallisation of sodium acetate gel. Preparation was good for me in that I had forgotten all about the whole change-of-state thing and the associated weird things that happen heat-wise.

Here's a wee query for all you armchair physicists: if I take two ice-cube trays - one with ice cubes and one with water - outside when the temperature is precisely zero degrees, what happens to the contents of each tray ? Consider this your homework for next week - answers on the comments page.

We're now on the semester-1 home straight. Back out to school for our teaching practice placement proper. This will last six weeks and will take us to mid-December and a three week holiday (which will be taken up writing a 3500 word essay due for January 7th). During this teaching block, we'll be responsible for three or four class groups delivering around ten lessons per week in total - which doesn't sound very much until you consider we're all taking around three to four hours per lesson plan. This three-four hours needs to become sub-60 minutes very quickly or it will very rapidly become completely unsustainable.

Also during this teaching block, every student gets their first "crit" - you are visited by your tutor who watches you deliver a lesson and then tells you why it wasn't very good. Essentially I have about three weeks to reach a minimum competency standard in time for the crit itself, and avoid the dreaded NYS grading. Not Yet Satisfactory.

Regular readers will recall that my two lessons so far were - in my opinion - NECTS and FB. Hopefully the latter will prevail in three weeks time.

The number of blogs over the coming month and a half will depend on how close I get to the sub-60 minute lesson plan, and how depressed I feel at not being able to do the job itself (which apparently is pretty much par for the course). I am fairly confident that by 14th December I will know two things about this career-jump of mine:

1. Whether or not I enjoy teaching
2. Whether or not I'm any good at it.

Here goes.

Blowing Hot And Cold

Two solid days at the weekend, thinking about how to teach a class of S2 pupils about series and parallel circuits. A full-on lesson plan (well ahead of schedule in terms of academic expectation), reviewed with my sympathetic and helpful incumbent physics teacher. Reworked following that advice - resulting in a better plan. Ready to go.

And my delivery was crap.

Dull lesson. Delivered with a set of shoulders that were tenser than the proverbial camel's arse in a sandstorm. Earnest pupils trying to pay attention and listen to my hopeless verbal micturating.

OK, so I'm exaggerating. My feedback was "OK - here's how you can make it better. It was by no means the worst first-lesson I've seen". But I hated it. It wasn't how I pictured myself as a teacher.

Fast forward 48 hours to my scheduled primary school visit. P7 teacher struggling with - savour the irony - electric circuits. My offer of assistance was jumped upon - and with no preparation, no time to fret about it - I delivered 40 minutes of exhilarating (for me anyway) teaching. High order questioning, pupil involvement, humour, cooperative teaching, and all finished off with a bit of assessement to guage achievement of learning goals.

The teacher gave me some good feedback but I only really heard "if I hadn't known you're a student I would have said you'd been doing this for years".

Woohoo!

So, a week of two halves. From the despondency of being poor to the exhilaration of being, well, pretty good.

This week, it's back to Uni for another four weeks. Four days a week. Tuesdays off.

Torture eh ?

Gordon Ramsay : Eat Yer Pansy Heart Out

As an old, earnestly non-sweary chum says - "Jings".

A week in real school and I'm knackered. Er, and because of the Glasgow autumn holiday on Monday it was actually only a four day week. Four days of non-stop teenage mentalness.

Tuesday was spent doing the intro meetings and school organisational chitchat. All very necessary, but it was only after lunch that I managed to get in among a proper class and start to do some toe-in-the-water stuff. "Can you tell me what you're doing guys ?" I asked of the spikey-haired-shirt-tail-hanging-out group of 16 year old pupils.

"Momen'um" - was the reply, not really inviting any further conversation. However, recognising the frictionless track, exploding bogeys, light-gates and timing device, I started to ask them to explain conservation of momen'um to me. It's funny, but when you play the daft-laddie it can really open people up. Within about fifteen minutes I was being asked what team I supported. Apparently it's quite unusual for student teachers to get talking to pupils so soon. Woop.

Thursday's plan was shadowing an S1 pupil for the entire school day - this turned out to be one of the most tiring days I have ever spent. Period 1 : 20 pupils (12 year olds) in the Home Economics deparment, each one tasked with making a pot of leek and potato soup........in about forty minutes. Apron on, sleeves rolled up, I constituted a classroom assistant perpetual motion machine for the entire period. Some pupils easily on-task. Some pupils not grasping how to scrub a potato. Some pupils in danger of cutting their fingers. Some pupils needing watched in case they scalded themselves. Twenty pots of soup later, and it was on to maths. Sitting at the back of the class, on at least two occasions, I came withing a whisker of putting my hand up with an answer to a question.

There followed a day of more or less non-stop attention-keeping. Hard enough for a bought-in budding-teacher adult, but for a 12 year old it's simply not possible to keep focus for that length of time. And it showed. You could count on one hand the kids that didn't get reprimanded for not paying attention. This was a "good class" too.

Needless to say, a small sherry was required on Thursday evening.

Anyhoo - this week I will be flying solo with a class of S2 pupils. My mission (if I choose to accept it, and I have) is to explain series and parallel circuits. Given the fact that actual teaching isn't a requirement for this short induction block, I'm hoping this will put me ahead of schedule.

Interactive whiteboard, here we come.

Um, Er, Um.

This week saw our first attempts at teaching a lesson. Not a lesson to actual pupils, but a five minute mini-lesson to our peers on a subject (of our own choice) from the "Health Physics" section of the Standard Grade physics curriculum.

I chose the use of Ultrasound, and given the fact that I have a fourteen year old scan from The Queen Mother's Maternity Hospital thought that a "real world" example of the technology might prove enough of a hook.

Now I've done a fair number of oily corporate PowerPoints, but this was wayyyyyyyyy tougher. Ever tried to explain the concept of sound when you don't know how much your audience already knows ? When you don't know how bright (or otherwise) they are ? When you don't know how motivated your audience is ? When you're not 100% sure of how the (ultra)sound is produced ? Why use ultrasound and not MRI? Is therapeutic ultrasound different to imaging ultrasound ? Where was it invented ? Is it dangerous ? How do you know ?

It is of course not difficult for an internet-capable dude like me to find the answers - once I've created a list of issues and questions. But my prep took me a day and half.

For a five minute lesson.

A full-time teacher is required to deliver more (probably way more) than twenty 50-minute lessons each week. Yikes.

Anyways, we were all a bit guilty of some umming and ahhhing (along with repeated use of "OK?") but some peer feedback told me that I had been "entertaining" and "engaging". "Educational" didn't feature as a comment, but then neither did "hopeless", so I guess I've avoided the dreaded crash 'n' burn for the time being.

This coming week I'll be able to see the whole lesson-planning and delivery in action as the time has arrived for us to spend a two-week induction block at our nominated school.