Week+1

Having spent the day reflecting on the past few days, I thought I'd take this opportunity to complete my first addition.

This week's issues lecture really opened my eyes to some of the issues that I could and will face as a teacher. Some of these I found very confronting (past or present students dying, families separating, domestic violence, parents losing their jobs, etc) and I wondered how I would handle them or whether I would handle them. I realised that through the strong support network of family, friends, workmates, etc that these challenges could be shared and therefore not too overwhelming to reconsider my decision to undertake this course. Greg's stories of running into fellow students and having them thank him for introducing them to a particular topic I found very inspiring and hopefully in time I may have similar experiences. One of the things that has drawn me to teaching is having a unique opportunity to instill or foster passion for learning in children and encourage their exploration of the world and themselves.

The other lectures have made me realise that all students are not like me and everyone will learn and behave differently therefore I need to read widely but most importantly I want to exchange ideas, experiences with fellow students and lecturers so that I gain a varity of knowledge on how different children learn and experience different classroom situations. Perhaps it is also important to gain feedback from the children on their responses to different classroom activities.

I think one of the biggest things missing from my schooling was any education on feelings and emotions and that feelings and experiences need to be encouraged to be expressed and school should be a 'safe' place to express these.

I look forward to learning from and sharing with you all.

Cheers Matt Thanks for your first message Matt! Good job biting the bullet and being the first one to dive in! :-D

I too came away from the first Issues lecture with my eyes opened wider to all the possible events that might shape or affect my classroom and my teaching style in the coming years. That said, I also found that I felt like I was really meant to be there and the more I listened to Greg and watched the video the more I truly felt like I'd made the right decision to move into the teaching profession. I had, in my previous university years, often felt a little uneasy about what I was studying and the potential jobs that may have eventuated from that line of study. So this feeling of ease made me really happy!

One other main thing I got from the Issues lecture was the emphasis put on teaching and thinking creatively in the classroom! I consider myself to be a rather creative person, not only with regards to the arts, but also with regards to how my mind tends to organise or manipulate things in order for me to learn them most effectively. My thought processes have always seem a little different to how teachers throughout my schooling have told me they should have been in order to get me to a certain realisations or answers. This always annoyed me to hell (excuse my french*) and it was terribly refreshing to hear from a seasoned teacher that creativity and flexibility was an extremely important part of being a good teacher!

Well, I'll finish up there! Thanks again Matt for starting the ball rolling in the Wiki...I'll admit I wasn't sure where to begin if I did add something so having your post helped guide me in the right direction.

Great to meet all of you in our first week! I've had a great time chatting and hanging out with all of you and the other friends we've met who aren't part of this Wiki :-D

Regards,

Laura :-D

I am not sure if I am supposed to reply to you or everyone???

Thanks for reminding me about probably the bigger issue of Greg's lecture 'Creativity'. I also found this lecture very empowering because I have a lot of creative ideas on things to add to a classroom which I never experienced as a student, hence I felt that this lecture filled me with a great deal of energy to try/test my ideas when the opportunity arrives. From the first week it seems a lot of ideas on teaching are now different to my personal experiences as a student...

Matt  There seems to be so many thoughts circulating in my mind over new ideas and issues discussed in just the first week of this course! If anything, I am feeling incredibly motivated and excited to be part of this course and learn as much as I can from the people around me. I think, as teachers, we can learn so much from each other's experiences. And personal experiences are always so much richer to me than what I might read in a textbook.

One of the issues of teaching which I feel some anxiety about is dealing with the real-life emotional issues. Following on from Matt's comments and the need as a teacher to be able to deal with family breakups, illness, injury, death, learning difficulties, bullying.... the list goes on and on. And no doubt we will come across these issues. I think it is important to consider in regards to issues like bullying, whether punishment results in a solution and the importance of positive reinforcement when dealing with children.

I really enjoyed the video of Sir Ken Robinson. Particularly his point, that children to a degree, are educated away from their creativity, and the importance as an teacher to nurture and encourage creativity. Allow children to be wrong and make mistakes, this is how we all learn. Making a mistake should not be something to be afraid of. Half our brain is devoted to creativity, so why not use it!

Emma Dear all, I am quite surprised at how much I have enjoyed this first week of Uni ! If I rewind back to the first lecture we had, which just happened to be an issues lecture, I had lots of questions running through my head. What is this course going to be like? Is it really going to help prepare me to be a classroom teacher? What are our lecturers going to be like? Now, at the end of the first week, I feel more confident that this year is going to help prepare me for my teaching career.

Being passionate about teaching been mentioned several times this week. This is an interesting concept. In my previous profession there were people who were passionate and to be honest, I envied them. I was certainly enthusiastic about some aspects of my job, but I knew there was something lacking. I feel far more confident that teaching (and indeed learning to be a teacher) will spark passion within me! There is one idea that Sir Ken Robinson mentioned that stood out to me. He talked about thinking of Shakespeare as a student and this made me think. Who is going to be in our classroom? Future politicians? Sports people? Artists? Pop stars? Maths professors? This thought excites me! I thought this tied in with the reading we did by Beare (2001) that explored the idea that we are responsible for educating children who are going to be the adults of a future that we know nothing about. How do we prepare them?

Lastly I would like to touch on something Matt and Emma have mentioned – that is, dealing with real-life issues that can come up in teaching. I would like to share my experience about working in a special school (and I just want to stress that this is just me reflecting on an event and is certainly not a prescription for dealing with stress!). When I started at this particular school, I was told (rather casually) that is it very common for three or four students to die every year. The staff explained that this was the nature of the population I was working with. I was quite shocked at the way this information was presented to me but simply pushed that information to one side, forgot about it and continued my work. However, as predicted, one student with whom I did work very closely passed away unexpectedly. Even though staff members had casually mentioned how students die, when the situation did arise, the support that they gave me was incredibly valuable. However what I found even more surprising was my own resilience and ability to adjust and move on. In this particular situation, there were many positives things to reflect on and learn from and these have contributed to how I think today. So I guess my round-a-bout suggestion is, we shouldn’t feel too scared of what might lay ahead. You guys have already acknowledged that things do happen that might be unexpected or upsetting (which is a step ahead of living in denial). Hopefully these things are not going to happen very often and there will be a million great things that will happen for every bad thing. Guess I’m a glass half full person! Thanks for reading

Cat