Adventures of: No Longer a First Year Teacher

Although I am not on a plane home yet, I am done my first year teaching (and my first year in China!). It was an incredible year, even though it was an incredibly challenging year. In my first year as a teacher I taught three blocks of grade 12 boys their most important class for all of high school - English 12. Here at Maple Leaf it is made even more important by the fact that most of them have only been speaking English for three years. I was blessed to have a pretty sweet group of boys, who over the past ten months got very used to my teaching personality and were willing guinea pigs to my learning process.

Here were my goals from this semester:

1. Plan my assessments better
2. Keep up with marking
3. Start with grammar and work up
4. Be less of a grump when my kids act like typical teenagers

Reflection:

1. I made a definite improvement, but still have an incredibly long way to go in this department. I am really looking forward to the chance to teach English 12 again next year - and have waaaaay more direction in my planning and prep towards my ultimate end goals.

2. Super awesome! I even had three points this semester in which I had marked every thing in my possession! I think improvement here does relate to a slight improvement in planning. I spaced out my assessments better and organized myself better.

3. I instituted "Grammar Extravaganza Wednesday" for the entire semester. Each Wednesday we would do a short lecture and then a mass of exercises, with a quiz on the content the following Wednesday. I hope to improve this next year, but it was a good start.

4. Improving. It really helped this semester to have one fun class (drama) where I was able to see my kids as kids. I get bogged down worrying about their marks and their upcoming exam, so it was a benefit to me to be able to see the kids relaxed and actually enjoying school. It was also much easier to downplay my stress levels this semester as I was more settled into a routine (both to life in China and life as a teacher).

Next year I want to continue to work on assessment, improve classroom routines, and find a more efficient way to communicate with my students outside of class time. Hopefully next year I can set up a Moodle account or a wiki for my students to grab resources, easily email me, and cut down on the need to track down a thousand handouts and papers that students are missing. I also get to teach a block of International Relations next year - which I am ridiculously excited about!

I feel like my first year teaching was a success, but I am glad to have it behind me! Bring on the next one!

Check out my students on their last day!