Life of a teacher

I feel I coped well with 3 days of day in the life of a teacher and taking on all of my mentor's responsibilities. I feel this because I managed to complete all of the prepped and planned lessons for the day within the given time frames. I was also able to transition well between lessons and tailor lessons to have an introduction and conclusion as the prepped work the Grade 3 teachers prepare do not include introductions or conclusions.

Taking on the responsibilities in the day in the life of a teacher was much easier in block 2 than block 1. I feel this was because my mentor teacher allowed me to have more responsibilities such as doing the register on ed admin and I was able to give assessments as these were not formal assessments whereas in block 1 all assessments were formal and had to be given by the teacher. I was also able to give merits to students who had their assessments signed by their parents.

Activities I felt were most difficult were lessons I had to present unprepared, for example, the grade head would send a message on the group saying they have to revise homophones today instead of revising spelling for English home language. I had to improvise in order to present this lesson as I didn’t prep for it the day before but I was able to adapt quickly and create a fun lesson nonetheless. Another example was after writing a letter to a friend the teachers said it would be fun to create an envelope to put the letter in and I improvised by pulling up a YouTube of how to fold an envelop and out of A4 paper and the video turned out to be quite difficult to follow but learners helped one another and they all eventually got it.

After reviwing the self evaluation I do feel I would rate myself higher in some regards. These would be time management and classroom management. I felt my time management when executing lessons was good through some time management strategies I learned from my mentor teacher.

Comparing my mentor teachers exit level outcomes compared to my initial self evaluation I feel my pedagogic knowledge has increased as I have learned a lot by doing my teaching experience in a GDE school compared to an ADvTECH school. I have learned how to specifically adapt my teaching methods to cater for 30 or more learners.