The Substitute

I spent Wednesday to Friday supply teaching at a school in Shannon (ie. Valcartier Base settlement). One of the most obvious things about it is that it's far. Far enough for people to utter "WTF!?" It's a small school with probably 300 students at most, and combined elementary and high schools in one building. The saddest part about the school is that it shows its age, without seemingly much renovation to help it out. I figure that the newest things about the school structurally are the temporary classrooms built at the elementary school section that they've been using for about 2 years.

The kids are generally similar to other kids that I have taught in Montreal, except for the noticeable lack of ethnic diversity. I was bombarded with many "How many languages can you speak?" questions, which naturally accompanied the "Can you speak Chinese for me?" questions. For three straight days.

My favourite part of subbing at this school was the genuine comraderie of the teachers at both levels, along with administration. No one was ever made to feel out of place, even the subs. My least favourite part of subbing (or maybe even teaching for that matter) was my lack of classroom management, especially among the younger grades. I was assured that the students were the ones at fault, but I am stubborn and I refuse to believe that it could be anyone else's fault but my own (except for exceptional circumstances). The only times the students would be calm and follow directions was when a teacher would step in and intervene, or when one of the teachers came to observe.

There is probably no deeper shame I harbour in my profession than not being able to fix my CM problems. I have almost no other problems in teaching; I'm certainly well versed in the maths and sciences (despite my misgivings about the McGill program), and coming up with new ideas and projects is one of the great joys of teaching. I am quite interested in curricular reform, while I still hold in respect the traditional methods of teaching.

So why in the world would a university teaching program not require the CM course? And why the crap isn't there something intuitive about CM? (Well, not intuitive to myself; there are countably many people in the world who are naturally gifted with this quality.)

This is my main stumbling block. My dear readers may be thinking, "WTF!? How in the world did you pass your field experiences then?" Well, the short answer is I didn't... my 3rd year cooperating teacher didn't pass me on that part, which was 1/4 of the categories he was grading me on. But he passed me overall, which led me to the 4th year field experience... where the 4th year cooperating teacher decided that despite my weakness, it would be a shame to prevent me from being a teacher. In fact, I agree with both of these cooperating teachers; for inept duds like myself, it takes time to develop an effective classroom management procedure.

So hopefully by doing enough substitution now, I might get the hang of something that will work for myself. At this school, I tried very ineffetively using the teacher's established discipline procedure with very laughable* results...! (*On hindsight only.)

Why didn't I do this before at the previous field experiences? Well, for the 3rd, it is probably understandable since I never taught before, and for the 4th, the students were rather better-tempered. Since I am now outside my cycle of the education system (and entering into the students' cycles of education) I feel like it's time to really stop moping about and do something about this horrible mess.

What I like the most out of teaching is working with students to help them learn. The most satisfying feeling is when I can see in their faces that they truly understand (and not just pretend to), but the second most satisfying is when they ask me for help.

Time to borrow some books from the library!