Visiting the school I am doing my placment in this year prior to the first week of teaching definatley made it a less daunting experience. I already met the staff, my host teachers and the principal prior and their encouragement, support and friendliness made me very excited to come back and teach. I was in during October to help the TY students with stage design for the school play and attended meetings during induciton week. I learned a lot about the school during this week including; "Vision 2020" for ongoing development and continued improvement of the school, the basic set up of the school like the one-way corridor system, hour long lessons and rules etc. and about some of my classes, specifically LCA as they have a slightly different course to what I have taught before.
On day two I had one of those “this is why I chose teaching” moments. When you leave the school beaming and enthused by the day. This was down to the learners being enthusiastic and, as mentioned above, the staff being so pleasant. They are all very positive and encouraging towards one another and speak highly of their students which not only motivates me as a teacher but the positive atmosphere also encourages the learners. My host teacher has introduced me to every class by saying how “proud she is of their work and talents” and how she has told me about “how great they all are”. This constant positive encouragement and support is something I want to mirror and keep up for my students and for the staff and teachers.
The work this week consisted mainly introducing learners to their projects through different small tasks. The 1st years projects are based on the theme of Utopia so they had to plan their "perfect" or ideal town in the first lesson. They had a list of different infrastructure and a budget to what they could include in their town and afterwards we discussed why certain buildings were important to them and why they placed them where they did. The 2nd year group experimented with wire to make angels and consider it for a material for their project. The 5th years loved their theme of Celebrating Culture and it tied in nicely to their Art History scheme on Early Christian Ireland and how Romans and other cultures had an influence on Irish art. After generating ideas through mindmaps they experimented with monoprinting to study their primary sources. We had a "zen" class for the first lesson with insense, seaweed snacks and all kinds of primary sources from different cultures! Learning about St. Colmcille and the Cathach (manuscript) and his exile to the Iona center in Scotland was very relevant to them being in St. Colmcilles Secondary School and some of them even knew the story before! The 5th Years in both groups made notebooks using Japanese book binding methods this week also which is a good introduction to the use of notebooks for them for next year and for life-long art practice learning.
Comments