The sillies..

When I first started teaching, I heard this advice a lot. “Don’t smile until the last two terms/quarters.”

To a certain point this is true. Respect is definitely given to a teacher who takes her children seriously and there is something about a teacher who portrays an ‘I mean business’ kind of attitude. I remember as a student, you knew which teachers you could push the limits with and which teachers you never took that chance with.

I have come to realize that we are working with and teaching a generation that hardly gets attention from home. So even if the attention from us (teachers) is negative, they are still getting what they wanted. It’s really sad to see children at the ages of 5/6 years old, fighting for this attention. (In the wrong manner, if I may add.)

With that being said, I find that not only does a smile or a giggle give the children some hope and attention but also it makes me feel great. I know that I feel much better about tackling my day tomorrow than I did this morning just because of a giggle I shared with my kiddies.

I believe strongly in; “There is a time for everything.” (It is also something I have learned from the Bible in Ecclesiastes 3v1.) My children know when it’s time to be serious and work hard. They also know that there is a time to play and a special time to be silly. I teach my children this from the beginning of the year. Yes, they may be too little to understand this but I know that if the balance in all of these areas is not correct then I will not be helping them reach their full potential.

My main point is, don’t get so caught up in delivering the curriculum that you forget why you love teaching. Don’t let a huge pile of admin put you off, don’t let that one child who can’t seem to ‘zip it’ get on your last nerve, ignore the colleague who can do nothing but complain and don’t worry, tomorrow is another day. Don’t lose your spark! ✨

Happy teaching 🤗

The child that went rogue..

So I have been in education for almost 10 years. During this time I have been an assistant teacher, I have studied education and I have been a fully qualified teacher for 3 years. I have seen many things and heard even more.

•”Mrs. Gaunt, are we the tiny humans that the giants play with?” – 7 year old. •Almost tripped by a student- ALMOST means I dodged it because I was smarter than him. 👏🏼 • A tantrum so bad that I physically picked up the child and removed him from my classroom. • A little boy tried to kiss me on the lips. 🤢

I have more stories but today I have to share with you about a little 5 year old boy in my class, I never would’ve imagined that things could’ve escalated the way they did.

It started off with small things, he would pinch other children or try to trip them. I was convinced it was so that I would speak to him, which would in turn cause him to have an outburst. In the beginning the outbursts were minor like grunting and his eyes would close half way as if his brain were shutting off (It sounds funny but that’s pretty much how I can picture it. 🥴)

This continued everyday for the whole month. Eventually, I had to seat this child alone because everyone was scared of him. One day, toward the end of the day he snapped completely. He started throwing chairs in the classroom, he rolled up my carpet and did whatever he wanted to. His parents were called in. And guess what??? ‘They have never seen this behaviour before.’

After the holiday he was placed back into my classroom after less than a month of rotation weeks (technically 2 weeks), he was back to his old self and this time it was worse. He turned a chair upside down and when I addressed the behaviour, he shouted at me. He wouldn’t walk to the principal’s office, so he returned to our class and decided to pour all his water out on to the table. Enough is enough, I thought. I was only able to get the Deputy Principal to come to my classroom and when she removed him, he started hitting her with his school bag. To this day, I still can’t believe this happened.

The parents were called in for a meeting and in the end, the School Governing Body asked if he could be given another chance. He would attend my class if his mother was there everyday to address the behaviour. Can you imagine anything worse than your child’s parent in your space?

It’s uncomfortable, of course, but the child listens and that’s all that matters right now. I was traumatized by this experience and felt speechless, how could a child this age behave in this manner?? Teaching is not all sunshine, rainbows and playing. We have some real rough days sometimes.

Thank you for reading, happy teaching!

The story teller

I feel like each class has one of these. You guys know exactly what I mean when I talk about this child. The conversation eventually goes like this- Student:“Mommy went to the shop and I went with her. We got some juice, yogurt, and guess what? Some ice cream.” Teacher:“Oh, that sounds like fun.” Student:“Yes, Teacher, it really was. After we went to the shops, we saw my mom’s friend and guess what??? She has 3 cats, not 4 but 3!!” Teacher:“Wow, I can’t believe that.”

This conversation will go on for half an hour during play time and still after school it will continue. It is so cute to hear all the stories but to be honest with you sometimes my brain switches off.

The problem comes in when it happens during work time. So I thought I’d share a helpful idea I found on Pinterest (A Teacher’s happiness App). I have used the concept of the traffic light. Which is very relevant to my age group. Cars, buses and trucks are still a huge hit!

Each child has a wooden peg with their names on it. Everyone starts at the green light. (Green means GO!) So the green light indicates that you are doing a great job and will receive a treat at the end of the week, if your name is still on the green light by the end of the week.

Then we have an yellow light. (Yellow means WATCH OUT!) If a student disobeys a class rule, they will move to the yellow light and if they are still there by the end of the week, they can not get a treat.

Finally, we have the red light. (Red means STOP!) If a student is on the yellow light and they disobey another class rule, then they are put on the red light. This means I send a letter home to mommy and daddy. If they are still there by the end of the week, they don’t get a treat. If a student is on either the yellow light or the red light and they are behaving better than before, they can move back up to the green light.

Our Behaviour Chart

Honestly, this is such a winner in my classroom. It works like an absolute bomb. This is the second year I have used it and I’m very happy with the results 🥳🤩👏🏼

Thanks for reading and happy teaching. 👩🏻‍🏫

The big shift to love tiny humans..

It’s been almost 2 years since I’ve posted anything on here. So I thought I’d start up again with some background of the passed 2 years.

I was teaching Grade 2 (age 8) children and toward the end of 2018, I was confronted with a conviction to change my direction in teaching. We were in a meeting and in this meeting we were discussing projections for the following year. In the middle of the discussion, I said “Excuse me? Is it at all possible for me to move to a younger grade/age preferably age 7/Grade 1?” The whole room went quiet and it was slightly awkward.😂 My head of department said,”We’ll, what about ages 5-6/ Grade R?”

It must’ve been God’s plan because from that moment everything fell into place perfectly. Now, I have found a passion for this age group and can’t see myself moving out of it any time soon.

It was definitely a shock when I first started working with this age. I sort of would give a whole bunch of instructions and they’d just stare at me. I was absolutely taken a back when I realised I have to teach them how to write their names, tie their shoe laces, open their packs of chips and often physically showing them how to sit on the carpet.

This job is so hands on, especially when you do the same thing 30 times. Everything takes longer in my classroom but that’s ok because there is no pressure for things to get done at this age. If someone is having a bad day, then we leave the work for another day. These children are happy. All. The. Time. It’s wonderful to be in this environment and to feel the feelings they feel.

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This is my classroom- new set up!

Thank you for reading.🖍✏️

Good days happen and so do bad days…

Today I wish I had some ‘teaching advice’ but unfortunately today was a not so good day, in fact, it hasn’t been a good few weeks.

I started off this week with a slight cold, so you can imagine the headache that came with that as well as the body pain. Now imagine having all of these symptoms and having 34 children constantly talking, demanding your attention and humming( my absolute worse sound in a class, I’ve threatened with demerits).

But as bad as you feel, you keep going on. There’s this thing about teachers you should know, they would have to be dying before they leave their class to someone else. (Some people would call this ‘control issues’. I call it ‘being in control’.)

Anyway as bad as you feeling you still have to fill in all your papers, there are still due dates that have to be met and you still need to think about your planning for the following week. It’s a lot! I have a secret that helps me keep going.

Prayer. I’ve found that my prayers are answered every single day, even when the days are the hardest, I still find an answered prayer. God is faithful and if you are doing his will then He’s got you! He makes me the teacher I am. All the glory to Him!

It’s a first…

It’s crazy to think that this is a year of firsts for me. Every single day is my first day, I’ve never been a teacher on the 3rd of May before. But today, I taught.

You can get as much advice from others as you possibly can(which is a good thing) but teaching is definitely trial and error. You can be as prepared as you want to be but at the end of the day, your amazing idea for an art activity that involves paint and leaves, will without a doubt flop. (In your first year of teaching, that is)

Let me tell you why this happens because we often have this perfect lesson plan in our heads for perfect children but guess what?? We don’t have perfect children, we wouldn’t be teaching if they were perfect children.

So even though art is very very exciting (for them), in my opinion start off with something a little less extravagant. Now don’t get me started on the glitter, glitter is for your own art not for the classroom (if you take anything away from this, take my advice on the GLITTER).

Getting to know them…

I got my class list a few days before I actually met my class. When I got it, I thought “how am I going to learn, never mind learn, say the names out loud???”

I said them out loud a couple of times (the way I thought they would be pronounced), and I made name tags to stick on their desks. I was ready for them. Or so I thought🙈.

I’m not joking a had to ask about 70% of my children,”how do you say your name?” for about 3-4weeks. (Seriously Beth, it’s not that hard!) Eventually they just started correcting me which helped so much, they say you learn from you students well mine taught me very well. Especially when I am a bit irritated and I have to shout out their names, now I do it with so much confidence.

So if you think learning to pronounce their names is hard. Try learning to distinguish between actual ‘problem children’ and just down right lazy children. It almost makes you feel silly, because you realize after 3 weeks that you’ve been giving your extra energy to a lazy child. Which got me feeling a bit frustrated with myself, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who has done this.

Because you don’t know these children, there’s no way you can possibly have them all sitting in the correct seats on the first day. So my advice on this is just seat them in alphabetical order and take it from there. After 2 hours on the first day you’ll have to move about 3 already. I’ve heard you’ll be moving children all year. An experienced teacher (Incredible Teacher Sue) told me, you don’t have to move them every term. In fact her exact words were “don’t make more work for yourself” (those words are true for every situation in teaching).

Here’s to something I’ve never done before…

Just to give you some background I am teaching Grade 2 in a government school. I currently have 34 children in my classroom.

The purpose of this website is to document my journey as a first year teacher, I’m just going to start off by saying “only the brave teach.”

Now I used to read this saying often and think, “nah, it can’t be that bad. They’re just little children who need love.” Well, I’m telling you now, nothing, absolutely nothing could’ve prepared me for what was about to hit me on the first week of school this year. To be specific the term started on the 17th of January and before that date, I had already felt overwhelmed.

Now you’re thinking what could you possibly be overwhelmed with, you had no children in your class. Yessss, well I was overwhelmed by the load of papers I received, that all seemed to be really important but I had no idea why. I am not exaggerating when I say I received about 30 pieces of IMPORTANT papers that week. Seriously I should post a picture of it.

In my overwhelmed state, I started chatting to quite an experienced teacher and she said to me “I keep a file that is called ‘documents for viewing’ and anything and everything I receive, I’ll put it in there.” Now this advice is so worth taking! Take it from a first year teacher. This file is the first thing you’ll need in your classroom (other an a stapler).

 

Teaching just got real

Thanks for joining me, I  hope you are ready to hear some of my stories. Watch this space!!

Teaching is a walk in the park….if that park is Jurassic Park..