Another week, more frustration from work

Before I go back to talking about the cool things in life, I wanted to take a moment to comment about work. The school year is now two months in and the best word to describe this time would be, frustration. My goal at the beginning of the year was to take this opportunity of having new classes to refocus on my mistakes and do my best to fix them as quickly as possible as well as improve as a teacher. Unfortunately it hasn't been as simple as I had hoped.

Two weeks ago I was asked to prepare for a demo lesson, where the staff and teachers would pretend to be students, and I would give a lesson to them just as I would my kid students. Honestly this is one of the most nerve racking moments I have at my job. I tend to be more nervous and make more mistakes during these demos. It was made worse by the fact that I ended up getting sick for three days missing work, and so my demo lesson was delayed to this week. And at the top of the bad news, I would have two of these this week.

Basically to explain as simply as possible, the demo lessons were short and focused on the first parts of my lessons. Things like intros, homework, etc. I tried as hard as I could to do my best, but my nerves tended to get in the way. I also tried to use it as a chance to show my problems in a way that maybe I could get some good feedback. The hardest part of it is each "student" is given a role that is pretty much the most extreme caricature of every student, from perfect little princess to brat from the seventh layer of hell. So it was a real challenge. In the end the results of the demo lessons were hard to take. I did many things well, many really good, but lots of nitpicking, lots of things I missed, and things that I need to fix immediately.

I tried my best between demos one and two to improve, and things got better on the second one, but again it still wasn't my best performance. I felt very disappointed all week from this and even expressed that in my meetings after words. The important thing I need to focus on is improving on the base of the teaching system we use at my school. Its pretty complicated, but I have most of it down I was told. But now I need to quickly make the necessary improvements to bring me up to that level.

Lastly the hardest thing I have to do is find a balance within myself in being able to be more strict with the kids, and show who is boss. I've never been able to show any sense of anger to a child, and even a raised voice is hard for me to do. Most classes I don't have to worry about this but others I have kids that do not always respect the classroom. Finding the best way to handle it has been difficult, and my trying to be nice and caring only is not working. Of course you have to be careful on both sides of the issue, but hopefully I can find some nice ways of dealing with it which not only makes the classes better, but also are comfortable to me.

Now that I've gotten all that frustration off my chest, back to the good things to talk about! More post with lots of good things shortly!