Last day of my school visit

My last week at School X has come to an end. This was undoubtedly the saddest day of my teaching practice experience. I was praying for this day to come, but I did not picture it to be this way. Academically this has been the most difficult and stressful week for me. I had to present seven evaluated lessons in one week, which was hectic. At times, my lessons followed immediately adjacent to each other, so I had no time to look through my lessons again. I learned that as a teacher, you should always remain calm, especially in difficult situations. Teaching is based on improvising a lot and this is what I had to do this week. Even though you write a thorough lesson plan, the lesson will never go exactly the way you planned. What I also learned is that teachers should be able to improvise when learners put them on the spot by asking difficult questions. This is something I experienced a lot this week. One cannot be prepared for the questions that the learners are going to ask. It is also difficult to actually think of an appropriate answer since the learners expect feedback immediately. I handled the situations the best way I could and the teachers applauded me for that.  On Tuesday invigilated a test and I had to supervise a Xhosa class where the learners had to practice their orals.

Assessment in the school was done by means of orals and tests. The grade eights and nines had Xhosa orals for the first time with their new teacher, so they were all quite nervous. The entire school wrote tests on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Monday’s assembly period was used as a test period and on Wednesdays the school has a fixed test period. The grade 8 also wrote a History test, which took place in class time. The grade 9 learners missed a few classes due to the ANAS examinations. The grade 12 learners wrote their preliminary examinations, so they did not attend school this week. The grade 11 learners had an English essay to hand in.

The school is in the process of expansion so certain parts of the school cannot be reached. The construction workers removed a few trees in order to make the ground level. The noise was disturbing at times; the building site is right next to the hall where the matric learners are writing.