Monday, March 19, 2018

Teaching

I am a teacher. I have been teaching on and off between maternity leaves since 2001. I love teaching and I love watching kids get excited about learning. I only have a permanent job on Wednesdays and the rest of the week, I either teach on call, or stay home/chauffeur/volunteer/cook/clean etc. My Wednesday class is a job share, so there is another teacher there for four days a week. This makes it challenging to have any kind of cohesive program, but it is working really well, for now. There have been so many Wednesdays where I have had those "this is why I teach" moments; I love my job.
Teaching on call, for the first time in years, has been interesting and eye-opening. First of all, there are lots of great ideas about how different classrooms are run and I love getting to borrow lots of new ideas. I am constantly standing in hallways taking pictures of great bulletin board ideas. But there are also classrooms that make me sad. I have been in some classrooms where it is clear that there is no fun being had. The day plan consists of piles of worksheets, there is no student art brightening the classroom and no games, manipulatives, cards, dice or anything that would allow for free play. I know how laborious it can be to plan for a teacher on call, so I am sure that some of the worksheets can be chalked up to easier and more straightforward plans for a TOC. Regardless, when I look around a room and see nothing besides more worksheets, I wonder. What is it like to be in grade 1 and have no fun at school? What would make a child in that kind of class excited to learn? With the readymade exciting lessons available at the click of a button, with all the fantastic picture books that beautifully illustrate social responsibility and other great themes, with beautiful BC right outside the school, why is there still boring, repetitive, meaningless work being done in some classrooms?

PS. I try to go outside with my students as much as possible. Last week, we were studying Emily Carr, so we went outside to sketch trees. When it's gross outside, we get creative by doing things like indoor camping day...