Life of a teacher

From the beginning of my teaching experience at Rand Park Primary School, I was asked to teach most of the lessons every day. In the first week, I became familiarised with the classroom routine and my mentor teachers’ style of teaching. The first few days I observed lessons, and in the afternoons my mentor teacher prepared me for the next day's lessons, giving detailed instructions on how I should employ pedagogical and content knowledge and what classroom management strategies I should employ in the classroom.

Some days the format of the day's lessons changed; in the morning it was preparation meetings before school started (I was asked to be at school by 6:45), so that we could prepare the day’s work, for example, cut and count the worksheets and resources ready for the day's lesson, which had been delivered the previous day. Then amend the lesson schedule if there were last minute adjustments required by the HOD or principal or if the loadshedding schedule suddenly changed. This way of starting the day, prepared for all eventualities, was very useful and gave me a great sense of self confidence, as everything was to hand, and I could deal with unforeseen eventualities far better when teaching the days lessons.

On the Friday before my “Life of a Teacher” day one of teaching experience at Rand Park Primary, my mentor teacher and I met to discuss what would be required of me when taking over the duties of a teacher in Grade 3V. I was asked to prepare lessons for the day in the life of a teacher, in accordance with my mentor teachers’ method of teaching lessons. My mentor teacher employed a very strict code of discipline in the classroom, with the learners knowing exactly what was expected of them. This routine was consistent, and although devoid of any classroom management tool, it allowed for any substitute teacher to easily take over running the day-to-day teaching schedule if she knew what the format of the teaching strategies and lessons were.

On reflection of my first day of teaching "The 'Day in the Life of a Teacher’, I thought I had performed quite well, managing to meet all the requirements and all the criteria. However, my mentor teacher had marked me down for not making sure the learners had cleared their desks before I taught the teaching and learning phase of my mathematics lesson on division. This, she insisted, would encourage learners to fidget, be distracted, and therefore miss crucial steps in the lesson. I made sure I did not forget that step for the rest of my teaching experience phase. The biggest challenges I found to be those of having to teach in someone else’s class and having to abide by their methods. My mentor teacher insisted on the children being seated in regimented rows in the classroom. This style did not allow for participation, collaboration, or allowing the learners to practice social and communication skills, which were not really evident at the beginning of my teaching experience. I was under the impression that there was a general rush to get through the teaching content and syllabus and provide the marks necessary for assessment and recording on the D6. I was encouraged to rush through the work and was not given any leeway to try to teach for understanding and assist the students who required additional time or attention.

It was not until my second teaching experience phase that I was able to influence the organization of the classroom and include some of my own teaching methods and classroom management strategies. This included introducing group work, which required moving the desks into 6 groups of 6 learners in each group, as I had 36 learners in the class. This worked so well in my second teaching experience phase as I used a superhero group reward system with each group color coded to correspond to their superhero group (see Fig. 1). All teaching and learning were regulated with this classroom management tool. For example, learners could move up and down the chart reward system, and this effected their group reward status. At the end of the week, each member of a group that reached the top star received a small reward. The teacher then reminded them that all individual behavior had an impact on the group's reward status, so they had to keep in mind that what they did individually in the classroom effected their peers. This allowed for learners to practice cooperation and collaboration in a fun and exciting way, and it allowed me to practice learning activities through play and exploration while training learners to practice working in a team and considering their peers when working together to produce an outcome. I found it necessary to include a second classroom management tool by way of a Quiet Critters furry friend strategy (see figure 2). It became evident that when learners wrote tests, there was a tendency to copy and talk to their neighbours. I handed out these quiet critters who, the story goes, were very frightened by any noise and had to be looked after by each learner, or the teacher would remove them to the safety of their jar for the remainder of the test or assessment, which required learners to be very quiet. This worked very well, and the learners were eager to obey the classroom rules of no copying from their neighbour and no talking during the test or assessment period for fear of losing their furry friends.

Reflecting on the three days of life as a teacher, the part I enjoyed most was the interaction with the children. I was able to use my own style of teaching, and I experimented with some of the theory I had learned at varsity. I openly embraced the Democratic philosophy of teaching and experimented with scaffolding lessons that aligned with the social constructivist theorists. I tried not to be the central figure in the classroom, and I encouraged feedback and input from the learners. I introduced group work and practical math lessons. I made extensive use of the whiteboard and introduced digital and visual aids such as YouTube videos, quizzes, and PowerPoint presentations in my teaching.

When comparing my own evaluation of my competencies to that of my mentor teacher in her review of my performance, I found that on almost all criteria she rated me higher than I had rated myself, and where she did not, her assessment agreed with mine. I think that with this encouragement, my confidence will grow, and I will feel comfortable incorporating more of my own style into my teaching. I embraced the administrative side of the teaching role, marking all lessons, assessments and tests taught and capturing marks on The South African School Administration and Management System forms (SA-SAMS), and by managing registers, monies, notices, parent emails, sick notes, and staff notices

I was really comfortable taking charge, and the learners seemed to respond well. I found the teaching experience phase very rewarding and challenging at the same time and was physically, cognitively, and emotionally spent at the end of every teaching day. It was a strange and interesting combination of being empowered during the teaching day and totally exhausted at the end of the day, but so very content in knowing that teaching is what I want to do every day from now on.

Fig 1. Fig 2.