3 weeks of substituting
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.
I came in on Monday and I had to teach all this teacher's classes plus some other classes as well. Many teachers were absent during the third term, some were just ill, had interviews, depression and heart attack. This lead to us student teachers to step in and do a lot more than was actually expected of us. I quickly had to get textbooks myself, organise for a laptop that I can use at school and find out who I can go to for planning and guidance.
My class were full most of the time, with up to 36 learners in the class during the period. I usually only had one or two periods off during the day. Junior classes were either English or Afrikaans and senior classes were bilingual. This tested my limits as I knew I was bilingual but I had no idea how much. I chose only to use English textbooks, my home language being Afrikaans, and right down the Afrikaans terminology when I might need it. The terms in both languages are most of the time not close to each other. I decided to push myself and just learn the terms with the learners. I was able to remember the terms in both languages without looking at my textbooks and translate between the languages a lot faster than I knew I was able to do. With regards to language, I asked my learners for feedback. I was told I used a lot more Afrikaans than their own teacher, English was mostly used as only 4 learners in the class were Afrikaans. They appreciated it and when I would some times forget to say something in Afrikaans as well, they would ask for it.
I had to teach without any technology for a week before I got a laptop, one which was very slow but still worked. I feel this helped me to adapt and go back to basics, helped me to get to know the subject better and then have great ideas for when teaching with technology. What I did with technology was to use Powerpoint presentations for the theory part at the start of a section. I would use bulletpoints and have both languages on 1 slide. English left and Afrikaans right. For all forms of technology English was in blue and Afrikaans in red. This helped learners to effectively follow in class and mark their own work. The learners told me that the memos shown to them on the projector was usually English only and always black and white. Powerpoints were never used. I used Powerpoints to explain the Financial Statements to my grade 10 learners. It was the first time they would do it, so I would section them off on different slides to make them easy to follow. The learners enjoyed and found the use of technology in this way helpful and something new. In a subject like Accounting, older teacher might not know how helpful technology can be. It takes a lot of time to do the first time, but come next year everything will be ready.
When I was made aware of the fact that the teacher will be away for the rest of the term, I asked permission to change the desk setup of the space I would use daily. It was more suitable to my personality, more organised which the learners noticed instantly and less cluttered which looked more prepared.
I will share more positive and negative stories in the follow up blog posts.
Have a wonderful day
xoxo
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