Sometimes when it has been a while since I've posted I'm not sure where to start. The last 2-3 weeks have been full. Maybe I'll start backwards from today. Today Olin and Alta represented Gosford Public School at the Cross Country Zones competitions (like state-side Regionals). They were excited and nervous. Alta kept drinking water before the race as I think she was especially nervous, and somehow the water made it better. It was really neat to see all the different schools competing, and to recognize some of the kids and parents from the soccer teams Olin and Alta play on. It gave me that 'community' feel that I haven't experienced since we were in Seward.
Alta ran first, and did a beautiful job. She was dead last at the beginning of the race. I know her racing style though, and I knew she'd pass a fair few by the time the race was over. Her first lap looked solid and she was tied with another runner - for last place. By the second lap she looked about ready to cry but had managed to pass (by my count) about 10-12 kids to finish at a respectable 46th place. She crossed the finished line and immediately bawled her eyes out. Poor girl. I think she had a good time though. Olin was really pumped up and ran his race right after hers. He was off the starting line like lightening and held the front position for most of the race. When he got to the last stretch he was in 7th place and you could tell he wanted to hold it. Something happened in the last 100m though, because he got passed by 3 runners and ended in 10th. He was so incredibly disappointed. He cried too, but it was more of a desperation kind of cry than an exhausted cry like Alta had. He thought he had come in 9th, and the top 9 get to go on to the next level of competition. He eventually got over it, and in the end, I think it turned out to be a really good experience for him. Man, I love watching my kids be active. It doesn't matter if it is running, playing soccer, or hiking in the mountains. It makes me so happy. Moving back through time from today, I'll give a quick account of my week at work. (Sigh) It wasn't necessarily a good one..... you know what? I'm feeling good right now. I think I'll skip most of the details. To keep record a bit though, I will say that I had to have my head teacher come into talk to my Year 8 class about their behavior. I flopped at writing a rubric for an assessment task for the HSIE faculty because I didn't do it my normal way.I tried to do it the way they had done previous rubrics. It wasn't what they were looking for, so I'm a little bummed that my debut at contributing to a faculty assessment wasn't up to par. I will move on though. In the big scope of things, a rubric is small beans. The one part of this week that has made my week especially difficult and stressful is something called QTR. I do need to spend a moment to talk about what I understand of QTR and my experiences with it. QTR stands for Quality Teaching Rounds. How it works is that teachers team up into groups of 4 and observe each other's classes. One observation for each teacher's class. As you watch the teachers teach, you record marks on a 3 page rubric concerning things like student engagement, environment, depth of learning, etc. As soon as I learned that I had to do this, I had immediate anxiety. I am an incredibly analytical person and spend a lot of time self reflecting. I have also been taught (through the US school system) that if something is not going well in your classroom, it is your fault. I have not been able to move past that in this school. It is incredibly hard on my professional confidence and self esteem. The idea of 3 teachers - who have never watched me teach before (especially not in Alaska) - sitting in on one of my classes brought me a lot of stress. If I could pack them up and take them to my classroom in Seward that would be no problem. I would be excited at the opportunity to have feedback, etc, from their practiced eyes. But to have them watch as I teach here? Um..... not so much. Not yet. One of the issues that I was having with QTR is that I'm not sure what the data is being used for. The people directing QTR kept saying that it isn't judgement of your teaching. But from the evaluation system that I'm used to in AK, that is exactly what a rubric marked observation is. Some school leaders told me that the data was going to be all collected and used. But it wasn't clear how it would directly affect me. We were also told that we weren't supposed to make any special kind of lesson to be observed but that it needed to be just a regular lesson. Through 12 years of teaching and experience with our (US) evaluation system, this whole thing was just really hard to work with. Don't make a special lesson. Have three teachers with no prior experience in your class observe you. And receive feedback on a wide range of standards that I already knew I was having difficulties being proficient in. The professional in me was going to do it. I even observe another first year teacher on Friday and scored his rubric and gave feedback. That is when the flood of crippling anxiety really started to take over. His classroom ran so smooth. "God, these teachers are going to come into my class, see me teach, and see truly that I'm a crap teacher that has poor classroom management. Of course, all my students will probably be especially bad on that day too. Because of the rude and disruptive behavior of my students we won't be able to get into any deep learning which will mean that I (as a representative teacher of my country and a guest in their school) am going to score low on all rubric points. Great. Glad we invited her to come teach here. Geesh." Well, this is a bit how my self-talk went. But I was determined. I was going to be professional and I was going to do it. Friday night I came home and planned. I spent three hours creating a fail proof lesson (complete with information about corpses and feces (Mt. Everest lesson).... What 7th grader is going to misbehave when learning about that!?). I thought about my lesson when washing dishes. I woke up in the middle of the night and laid in bed for hours (literally) thinking about it. By Monday I had envisioned success. I was anxious, but I was cautiously confident. I got to school Monday, and opened my school mail to find an email from one of the members of my QTR group that said he couldn't do it on the day we had planned to observe my class. Could we shoot for another day? All that planning and they weren't even going to watch that lesson. That was the beginning of the decline. By 3th period I was completely deflated and went into a class with my Year 8 students who's behavior rivaled their atrocious behavior during the first week of school. I couldn't get them under control. It sucked. I sucked. Everything sucked. (I usually don't like that word. But it really fits this situation well.) After that lesson, no matter how professional I WANTED to be, I knew that I couldn't do QTR. I talked with my head teacher (who is also on my QTR team) and we agreed that I wouldn't do it. Honestly, I'm embarrassed that I'm not participating. I think I'm dealing with pride and ego issues, which is something that is a bit new for me. I've never considered myself to have an especially big ego or inflated pride. I try damn hard to be good at what I do. That includes being a good teacher AND participate in things like QTR. I just couldn't do it though. The anxiety was too crippling. I told one of the administrators that I would be game for doing it 4th Term, but that I'm still trying to get on my feet, that I'm just not ready. I'm too raw. I'm too vulnerable. Ok..... I'm done talking about that. Oh... wait. One more thing. Michaela and Lesley, thank you for all your help this week. Thank you so very, very, very, very much. Whew.. So two weekends ago we went to the Hunter Valley and camped, hiked, and went on a fabulous hot air balloon ride. We saw kangaroos hopping through vineyards and drank good local wines. We also finished The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe audio book. It was raining one of the evenings that we camped, so we set the kids up with what we called a "drive in movie" (Dad's iPhone phone in the car) where they watched the BBC old school Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe movie that I used to watch when I was little. (You can find it on YouTube if anyone is interested.) We even bought popcorn from the store so the kids could have a real movie theatre experience. I think that's about it. I know I've left some things out. Maybe I'll make a list of sound bites to fill in any gaps! 1. Aussies shorten 'afternoon' to 'avo'. As in, "I'll see you in the avo." 2. Lyre birds are now my new favorite bird ever. 3. Tics. Australia has tics. I don't like them. 4. One of the best parts of ballooning is the landing. The skidding, bouncing, and then gentle tipping is just really fun! 5. Alta has just learned how to play Rummy. 6. Olin's goal keeper practice had him sliding on a big blue tarp covered in water to help him learn to slide after a ball on his shoulder. Looked like fun! 7. We ate ta tar for the first time with our dear Polish friends. It is a special type of raw hamburger served with a raw egg yoke, anchovies, capers, onions, and pickles. So good! 8. When you go to a starting line at a race the announcer tells you to "marshall" to the line. All I kept thinking of was Dan Marshall in Seward and how cool it was that his whole family are runners and it is kind of a running term here. 9. It gets cold in Australia (manageable though). This morning it was in the 40s Fahrenheit. 10. Walking to school has gotten a little scary with a recent event here. I'm still walking, but I'm not enjoying it as much. It makes me a bit nervous. Walk to Work Tally Term 2 - 141 miles
1 Comment
|
AuthorThe Liljemark's enjoy exploring the world. This blog chronicles our adventures. Archives
December 2017
Categories |