I recognize my privilege and how fortunate I am to have the wherewithal to pursue an education—and ultimately—a career. That being said, I found myself at multiple points during the last two weeks on the 'short practicum', wondering what the experience could've been like, what it should've been like, were there not a pandemic in our midst. Moments of doubt effervescing to the surface of my consciousness, pushing me to wonder if it was a smart decision to be doing a teacher education program, of all things, during a public health crisis. And yet, here I am, on the other side. Justin Lam, certified-teacher-in-training (?) Imposter syndrome is so real. On one hand, I'm confident about my knowledge of what I'm teaching. I did a whole degree in French, and I worked and studied in France for two years. And yet, there's a part of me that's like, 'Yikes. These kids are gonna see right through me. They're gonna know that I'm not a native speaker and that I still have to look up what a wheelbarrow is in French'. (The wheelbarrow thing is a true story, by the way. I might do a story time one day.) Beyond subject knowledge, it's also the constant fear that I'm not doing things right, or that I'm missing something crucial in my plans for the day. Over the last two weeks, I catch myself trying to overcompensate for what I see/know are my shortcomings. Feeling social anxiety when students leave me hanging after a question? Overcompensate by throwing in a couple of filler words. Hitting a block when drawing up a plan to teach Haitian literature to Grade 8s? Overcompensate by incoherently throwing every idea in my head onto a Word document... Thankfully, I've been able to connect with a number of in-practice teachers during my practicum, and in speaking to them about my reservations, I'm just happy to know that I'm not alone in this feeling. I'm told that even experienced teachers get that sometimes, the fear of slipping up and being exposed as someone just 'playing the role'. I don't expect that feeling to dissipate any time soon. But knowing that it's not just me give me a little bit of space to breathe and that at the very least, I'll have someone to talk to about it who'll sympathize. 'Hey Siri, how do I plan all these lessons and still stay sane?' One thing that I've kept in mind since the short practicum ended, was a piece of advice that my school advisor gave me: there's no shame in taking shortcuts—as long as it's efficient, and pedagogically sound. When I started out teaching, I taught older students and adults. Those classes were less frequent (maybe once a week at most), and I was dealing with a more self-directing clientele. Moving into the secondary school system, I'm faced with the prospect of working on lesson plans for three sessions a week, for five grade levels—all doing different topics and themes in their units. I'm someone who aims for completeness and with that comes the temptation to start every lesson plan afresh, and develop something new for every session. I've learnt that while my intentions are in a good place—I will only cause myself to burn out, causing poorer planning, poorer teaching, etc. So what I'm working on is developing core structures for language-content, literature and project units that can easily be outfitted with grade-specific accoutrements. Sure, there'll be a lot of similarities between grades and units. It might be a little boring, even. But that's not entirely terrible. Consistency is a side-effect that I can get behind. And I think students will learn to like it too—knowing what's coming up and not being surprised is always important. Good kids, 'bad' kids I don't think I've ever been under the delusion that classroom management is easy. As someone who's not necessarily the most assertive personality in a crowd, it's hard to have to raise my voice and establish my authority in a room where I'm outnumbered 1 to 20. Over the two weeks on the short practicum, I've had the opportunity to see multiple teachers working with classes of varying sizes. It's interesting to see how classroom management is really an individual, case-by-case thing. No one set of strategies will work across the board. From what I've observed, and from what I've personally experienced through teaching full lessons so far, is that classroom management is a constant balancing act; you're simultaneously trying to gain the students' trust and favour, whilst maintaining that distance and ensuring that it's clear who's in charge and who's the 'boss'—me. It's only when you manage to strike that balance that the classroom dynamic can operate according to your rules. If your students don't like or respect you enough, the chances of them responding consistently to requests for quiet or focused work is slim to none. Working with students as individuals, rather than just members of a class has been a goal of mine during this practicum. I've always been cognizant of the fact that it's always worth it to take the time to know every single one of your students, even if it just for a short moment or two each week. The pitfall (which I admittedly fell into) is to get too caught up in the surface necessity of dealing with an entire class population, at the expense of individualized connections. I'm happy that my faculty advisor and my school advisor have also identified this as a point for development (being on the same page is key for feedback). As I continue to work with my student-teaching classes I look forward to letting go a bit of the 'grip' on the class, as the mutual respect and trust between me and the students develop, and letting my understanding of each student deepen as February approaches. 'You're basically going through a regular year's worth of shit in two weeks.' That's what one of the other teachers in my practicum told me as we were going up the elevator to the third-floor staffroom at 8:00am. I think we all knew that this is a crazy time to be doing a degree like this, where so much is dependent on in-person experience and contextual immersion. And yet, nothing prepared me for the ensemble of circumstances that shaped these past two weeks. I can't imagine what it's like to be British Columbia's patron saint of health, Dr Bonnie Henry. Everyday, she's tasked with keeping public health in check, whilst containing the possibility of mass hysteria in the province. That's not an enviable job. And yet, as a teacher (in the works), I can't help but feel a little in the dark when it comes to knowing what to do when an outbreak happens at your school. During my school practicum, two individual students were confirmed to have tested positive for COVID-19, both in grades I taught. Good news: I tested negative (didn't really have symptoms; got tested anyway out of paranoia). Bad news: parents keeping kids home for days. I'd planned to teach a class of Grade 10s one day during the two-week practicum, but that ended up falling through because a Grade 10 student tested positive for the virus, and as a result, we had three students come to that class for the rest of the week. Three. Out of 23 students. So that day ended up being a movie day, because my SA and I agreed that it didn't make sense to do language work when only a handful of students were present. What I'm getting at is that I'm learning that adaptability is the name of the game during these times. We never know what's going to hit us next in this whirlwind of a year. But I've got a positive outlook. If anything, I'll come out of this experience with little more character built, a little more patience shown towards unfortuitous circumstance, and a bit more confidence in myself. Oh, and did I mention that we had a power outage for more than an hour one day? Fun times. There's a Persian proverb that goes thus: گر صبر کنی ز غوره حلوا سازی Gar sabr koni ze ghoure halva sazi 'If you're patient, you'll make halva out of sour grapes.' Here's to hoping I'll have a platter of halva to share with everyone at the end of it all. Sure, it may not have the prettiest presentation, and it may not taste quite as authentic. But it'll be mostly there. And a lot of heart will have gone into it. And that, I think will make all the difference.
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Today marks the end of the first week of my journey towards becoming a bona fide, certified teacher.
This was an orientation week for the IB-MYP specialization I opted for in addition to my subject teachables. While classes don't truly start until next Tuesday, I've already gotten a taste of the conceptual soup surrounding the processes of thinking critically about education and teaching—and I love it. There's really nothing better than delving into the hypotheticals, discussing your past teaching experiences with your cohort-mates and imagining all the ways that you'd ideally incorporate such thoughts into a practical situation. Still, a little overwhelmed is one way of putting my mental state during this week into words. That's due to a combination of circumstance (a public health crisis), the time elapsed since I was last formally a student (three years) and the monumental scope of the institution we call education. A lot of my peers are feeling the same way, and I'm happy that I'm sharing this experience with such a diverse and empathetic group. But I'm hanging in there, and I think the fact that my instructors are so encouraging and understanding has a lot to do with it. Seriously—there's a huge difference in having an instructor who's super theory-bound with little actual instructional experience (unfortunately the norm in higher education) and someone who's actually served in the profession for years and can demonstrate what they're teaching. The last time I was in an online class, it was bleak, dahhling. Like, half the class trying to use Zoom on (what seemed like) dial-up. Classmates with a total lack of self-awareness posing into the camera like it's a mirror. People trying to figure out how to unmute themselves for literal minutes. Given my chequered past dealing with virtual learning, I'm honestly pleased with how smoothly everything's gone this first week. Everyone was so on the ball. If we can keep that up for the next eleven months, I'll be overjoyed. I'm no stranger to virtual learning. I lived in Hong Kong and was in Year 3 (equivalent to Grade 2 here, I think?) during the SARS pandemic. That was a doozy. Everything was asynchronous (Internet speeds weren't typically fast enough for 30+ people to be video conferencing all at once) and we were using some 1.x.x version of Moodle (I vaguely remembered that—I'm pretty sure I just purposely blocked that out of my memory). So honestly, I shouldn't even complain about Zoom and Canvas and Google Drive and whatever else we have now. Things have gotten way better. But frankly, it's exhausting. This has just made me ever the more conscious of the need to take breaks, take breaks, take breaks. I'm one of those people who tend to want to do everything in one sitting but seriously, for my own sanity in this intensive program, I'm going to need to cut that out and interact with my physiological functions better. It's nearing midnight as I'm (still) rambling on in this blog post. Tomorrow's Saturday, but I should still try and regulate my sleep schedule to some extent. In the meantime, I'm currently looking into alternative ways to refer to the COVID-19 pandemic, beyond 'these uncertain/difficult/trying/unprecedented times'. If I had a dollar for every time I heard some variation of this phrase I'd probably be able to pay off my student debt. |
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