Onnie Blog

Hi everyone Good experiences, can be good lessons, funny moments and secret moments shared between a teacher and a student. Good lessons to me are when learners stop me and tell me, please go back or your are too fast. It makes me feel like I am doing something right. Because they care, listen and are self-regulating. These are the things we want to teach our learners, we want them to become the best people that they could be.  Funny moments can be when I make a lame joke and the class laughs for me with me. Something that also happens every day, is when I make a mistake. It can be using the wrong term or calculation errors. I handle this in two ways, I either say oops I was testing to see if you were paying attention (assessing if the class understands and pay attention) or I just say I was wrong, this shows the class that you are human and you make mistakes too. Secret moments were when a learners is in need of someone to listen them or pick up a pen or pencil from...

Hi everyone Today, I want to share some bad experiences, don't worry the good ones will follow. It is just realistic to be aware that every day won't be easy and despite the bad days and/or moments, the good always outweigh the bad. If this isn't true, then you should go to another school or another job. This school has a lot of problems with discipline. I believe it is because of society, leadership and the school and some teachers not enforcing discipline which then makes it a lot harder for other teachers. I was looking after a class during the first week of the term, we were outside and I tried to talk to the learners and keep them from doing anything stupid. I started talking to a group of boys and of course they started asking me personal questions. Some I were comfortable enough to answer and others not. The next moment, in very inappropriate and I am unable to share them language, the one boy presumes to basically tell me he wants to get with me and...

Hi everyone After you read the previous post, you must think that the rest of the experience was awful BUT it was not. One of the accounting teachers at school struggle with depression and things got too much for her about 3 weeks into the term. She was quite upset on the Wednesday and I remember my mentor teacher telling her not to worry we will take care of everything. We, meaning the school which includes me. I was asked if I will take care of her classes for the rest of the week. I'm not sure if I received any planning at the start but the next week I had none. The teacher took her laptop and all her textbooks with her, which left me with no resources and no planning. I had the schedule for the grade 10 accounting learners because that's the grade I was teaching for at my mentor teacher's. Other than that, I had nothing and my mentor teacher didn't teach the grade eights. By that Friday, I was told to be prepared to teach full time for the next week. ...

Hi everyone I know I promised you guys a daily reflection, but the teacher practical turned out to be much more demanding and time consuming than I thought it would be. From the start, I had problems connecting to my Accounting mentor teacher. After teaching my very first Accounting class, I broke down in teachers afterwards. I was told that I didn't assess whether learners understood what I was teaching. I didn't cry because of that, but because of what happened. I mean I was there to learn after all. I asked how I can correct that and here's the answer I received: Well I don't know, because I have a understanding with my learners so you will have to figure that out. I was really upset, because I quickly realised that I wasn't going to receive any guidance and advice from this teacher. She is a vice principal, loved by all and mostly friendly. My fellow students at the school received great feedback and I got to listen to all these stories at break every d...