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 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 Today the day felt longer than yesterday. I went to the same Accounting teacher's class today for first period and I like the way the teacher uses a document camera to teach. It does however limit the teacher to staying in one certain part of the classroom, but it might be remedied by forcing oneself to walk around as well. I point this out as this specific class is where I will be teaching. I will have to navigate my way through not staying at one spot but also connecting with the learners while teaching the content.  I used an off period to work on another Math Lit lesson plan after which I went to a different Accounting teacher, I will call her Miss Rek, which gave me some different teaching techniques. She uses her laptop and projector to show the journals on the white board and then she fills them in using whiteboard parkers. This helps her to safe time and also enables her to stand in the middle of the class rather than at one side.  In my opinio...

Hi everyone Today was Day 2 of my school observation. I was in the staff room early and made myself a cup of coffee, this is nice not because of the coffee but then you get to greet the teachers and the principal always sees you. We students sit on the right hand side of the podium where the principal addresses the staff. It kind of feels like the naughty corner as we don't have a table yet but only chairs. I went to Accounting classes at Miss S most of the day and to one of Mr ML's classes at the end of the day. I was, and still am, a bit stressed about Accounting as I've never taught or learnt it in English. But the teacher is very relaxed, answers all of my questions and she's an amazing teacher. She has been teaching for several years now and the children love her. They enjoy her stories, participate in class and listens to her without her having to discipline them all the time. It was an absolute pleasure to be in her class today and I wish she was my te...

Hi everyone In  yesterday's blog I shared my own school going experience, it will help you to understand the things I will write about now. In our course this year it was a requirement to do school observation for two weeks before university starts. We had to arrange with a school ourselves and it was suggested to go to a school different from the one we attended.  When I was grade 10 we moved from Town 1 to Town 2 which is within driving distance from my high school and university. Reading the requirements, I decided I would try to go do my school observation at a school close to my house. These is a school very close to my house that is very different from the one I attended. The school has about 1260 learners, where I am used to 650. The school was both English and Afrikaans. The learners are coloured and black and travel to school, either by taxis or train. The school doesn't have a hostel like the school I attended, but has different sports that I'm not fami...