The strangest thing happened yesterday when I walked into Sir Winston Churchill School: I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be at that point in time. It was like all the forces in the universe had aligned and just brought me there into that noisy, chaotic moment, where, surrounded by hallways far narrower than university corridors, students far younger than I ever wanted to teach, and lockers speckled in graffiti and slurs, I felt like I belonged. I was greeting Junior High School like I would an old friend, with a deep seated sense of familiarity and the realization that yes, I had in fact missed this.
Or maybe that was the adrenaline talking. I have the tendency to romanticize moments of extreme mental and emotional duress. It's a defence mechanism, really: if I convince myself that an event where the variables and outcomes are unknown is familiar, welcoming, and intended for me, I don't have to face the fact that I'm standing on the brink of catastrophe, one slight provocation away from running for the border and never coming back.
Defence mechanism or not though, yesterday was the greatest experience I've had as a teacher candidate so far. Over 60 students - two grade 7 classes - had gathered into the central hub of the school at four cafeteria-style tables. Unlike the previous team teaching sessions, my group was working alongside a second group to fulfill the third and final portion of our grade for this assignment. We had a bit of a different method this time; we had to. There wasn't enough time in the period to have monologues or presentations, nor did we feel our audience had the attention span to last through eleven presentations, some of them doubles of other presentations. The result was a compromise: my group had an activity we'd been planning for weeks, one that we felt could be implemented at the beginning of the period and used at the end to bring the group back together for some debriefing and review. That activity was geo-tiling, the not-extreme kind. Call me crazy, but I didn't think bear, mountain lions, poisonous snakes and European heavy metal were appropriate for a grade seven activity. Maybe for a high school class.
We divided the students into eight groups - one for each of the expert groups. Since we had one double, one group had two representatives. That left two of us - Janelle and I - to distribute the geo-tiles to groups, collect them, and assemble the geo-tile at the end of the period. Walking around, I couldn't help but feel a little jealous of my other group members. There was so much energy in the room, I would have loved to have a group of my own to teach. Being a sort of liaison was nice though. I got to see how all the groups were operating, to carry out some executive decision making on behalf of the representatives, and do my best to support everyone and keep the morning moving smoothly. When the time finally came to assemble the geo-tile, I was very excited to present it to the classes, because geo-tiles look spectacular, even more so when everyone has contributed to the finished product.
The geo-tiles went over really well with the classes, and the teachers seemed impressed with the way the period had gone. As one of the geo-tilers, I don't feel confident grading the students in any way, because I didn't work with them closely enough to observe their learning styles. I can say that the environment and the classes were an absolute joy to work with, and that I have seriously reconsidered my staunch stance on what grade I would like to teach when I graduate from the program. There was so much energy, so much excitement, in that school that I am more than a little overwhelmed by it all. I'm glad that this was our last team teaching; everything after this experience would have been anti-climax.
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