Everyday I'm Shufflin'

There's been a bit of pot stirring going on in the media lately. Teachers are gearing up for a September 5th strike day, and clearly the Herald Sun thought this article by Rita Panahi would be a useful addition to the debate. As a teacher on my way to being fully qualified, I have to say my blood boiled just a tad on reading it, although I suppose that was the intention all along. Maybe this is what my emerging teaching identity is; getting riled up at inflammatory journalism.

In other news, I've transferred over to my second school for the last 3 weeks of my placement. There's a whole lot of new things to get used to, such as having 70 minute periods instead of the usual 50, having a male mentor teacher instead of a female, and a whole bunch of new students to try to understand!

Every day I get small glimpses of my inner goddess teacher (Oh man, is there anything worse then 50 Shades of Grey?), whether it's through explaining a concept really clearly, jumping on a student's question and deflecting it around the room, really pushing a student to develop an idea further, or stepping up and defusing potential behavioural issues before they begin. Let me emphasize again that these are small, small glimpses, ones that make me think, cautiously, 'Yes, I can do this!'.

Then, inevitably, I have moments where well-planned lessons go to pot for some reason, where I feel too tired and exhausted to attempt to be helpful to the students who are giving me attitude and seem ungrateful and unmotivated, where I'm not sure of answers to questions or where I simply get overwhelmed by the amount of content I have planned and rush through it just to finish the class. I have successes, I have failures. I oscillate. I think I run out of steam sometimes. I shuffle onwards, looking forward to the day when I will think to myself, 'Yes, this is it. I am a teacher.'