lulus

Well, today I received word that I passed my prac.

Coming away with a satisfactory, and a job offer (that I unfortunately can not take) made me feel a whole heap better.

An despite the whole ordeals I have been feeling, I am going to go back and volunteer there. The more teaching practice the better. 3 weeks are simply not enough.

Spring is just around the corner...

So the trees are blossoming, which reminds me that spring is coming, meaning it will hopefully get warmer soon.

I'm so thankful to God that I'm not flaring up like last year. Last year, I blew up in a crazy rash, and had hay fever like never before. I believe it is because it was my first year in my new house, and I wasn't used to the big bloomin' tree out the front. (pardon the pun!)

Prac ends at the end of the week. Although I have spent a lot of time feeling like a failure and not up to 4th year standard, today I walked away with a smile on my face. I planned and helped run a whole school "Indonesia day". Quite honestly, there was so much I could cover, it should be an Indonesia week.

So that is a good thing that has happened this week. Often I feel like a bit of a clown, but I think my confidence is growing. I know that there are so many more areas as a teacher I really need work on, and perhaps some people think I'm not up to scratch as a 4th year. But that's ok. Some of us are born-natural teachers. Some people have it in their blood. I seem to be neither. But as a teacher, I know I will never stop learning, I will never stop reflecting on my performance. And that is what is upmostly important.

It's merpati and I'll die if I want to...

Today on the way home, I was listening to The Benchwarmers with Ant and Becks.

They often have a talkback topic. Today it was about the worst flights ever.

Every caller in had terrible stories about Garuda Indonesia, or other related airlines in Indonesia.

Yikes. But not that it surprises me.

God's paper mache

So this week is the start of my three week practicum. I am doing it at a small school, not in Bendigo. It is definitely challenging, and different to any prac I have ever done before.

I have done 6 different schools in my time of being a student teacher. Each school has been different and beautiful in it's own way. However every previous school has been big enough to have multiple classes of the same grades. I have landed myself in a classroom that ranges from three different grade levels, with a total of 11 students.

Where I am is not the most "well off" area in the world. Many places are. In previous blogs that I owned I regularly struggled with what kids had to go through these days.

So being in a lower socio economic area, I find myself not only trying to plan for a diverse range of abilities and needs (which usually is a need in a classroom with only one grade, anyway), but I am planning for students who probably are not up to standard. Compared to other schools I've been in, these kids aren't performing as they should be. I don't think it's the fault of the teacher, nor the students. My teacher didn't seem overly concerned. Their main concern is that students are not getting the love and attention they deserve at home. They endeavour to make each student feel loved and valued.

Then I, the student teacher gets up, and I'm not light, I look like a dragon. I have no good rapport with my students because I'm trying too hard to prove that I am doing a good job of keeping these kids under control.

It has been a while since my last round (September 2007), and I feel so out of touch. Thursday night had me coming home in tears because I felt like a failure. At a 4th year level I felt like I expected so much more of myself. Perhaps I need to be easier on myself.

But I guess, at what point do you chuck VELS out the window when these kids need to be up mostly cared about? When our students just can't 'benchmark' against the states standards, but the teachers are saving their lives because they give a damn? And how would performance based pay even be fair? What really matters?

Because for 4 years I've had nothing but I need to endeavour to make these kids meet the standards drilled into my head, and suddenly, I've been awakened to this reality that in some places, that isn't the priority!

In other news, I was offered a job teaching Indonesian for 3 hours a week. The only setback is it is 60 km from my house. I'm trying to weigh up if it's worth it: professionally, financially, mentally.

The title is a remark that a boy in grade two made today as we were making people out of paper mache. "Do you think this is how God made us? And really we're just people made out of bottles and newspaper?" (no, I'm not in a Christian school)

confidence

During my time teaching, well, all through my life, I have struggled with having confidence. Every time to do an assignment or anything really, I don't believe in myself that I can do it. I become very anxious very quickly. In fact, on prac the visiting lecturer mentioned that I didn't seem to have a lot of confidence in myself. And I believe that as a teacher, you need to have a good degree of this, so that you can adequately engage your students, and so that this same confidence can rub off onto them. I don't know what the root cause is. Perhaps it has been because in my life, I have never felt fully the best. Someone is always better than me, and that scares me. Because people are going to be better at me than getting jobs... agghhhh!

But in a very weird twist, when I was in Indonesia last year I had confidence like no other. Yes, at times I felt scared. Yes, at times I cried and cried like crazy. But I always felt confident that I could communicate with the locals, and I felt confident that most of the natives loved me (bules are another story!!). And wow. If you had seen me the night we left Bali Airport, confidence was just a bit too high I think. (I think it was a reaction of crap I'm leaving Indonesia, gotta make the most of it!)

So this prac I plan/pray to work on that. It being my final prac, it is like my final chance!

mac the new shiny

I never thought I like Macs. I always thought they were crap. Shiny useless, not-user-Sammy friendly machines.
But increasingly I have seen that Windows is loosing touch. The only good thing I've heard about Vista is that it looks good. I'm fortunate enough to still be stone aged and on windows XP.
Macs seem to be getting better.
Windows seems to be getting crappier.
In fact, this week, in class with power point presentations, I have heard nothing but not good stuff for vista.
I think my next computer purchase will be a mac.

when September ends?

How incredibly annoying.

So it's supposed to be holidays. Not only does it suck because I have not yet had a chance to enjoy them, with random class and work needing to be done, but tomorrow it starts all over again. This week: classes 9-4, every day.

It's not by choice that I wanted to do this. Unfortunately I was a mere 5 credit points being off allowed to graduate, meaning I had to pick up something somewhere. With the artist that I am, it seemed silly not to pick up Art.

But Art is always difficult. Lots of work, as fun as it can be, 3000 word assignments, that I stressed over only to find that it isnt due for another month. Honestly, I'm annoyed. I quit church much to the disgust of Sam's dad this evening to do this assignment, that really isn't a priority. But it really is my own fault for skimming and not reading.

I decided to do my assignment/presentation on Ken Duncan, although I was discouraged to. He is a Christian, and I pulled a lot of stuff from different aspects of his work.

And to top it off, I don't even know where my class IS tomorrow!

I really REALLY want a break. But I don't see that happening any time soon. Wake me up when September ends. No, really!

forever isn't long enough

It seemed like forever until I would start school.
It seemed like forever until I would be a big kid in grade 6 and rule the school.
It seemed like forever until I could get out of primary school and start new life in a new school in a new state.
It seemed like forever until I would do VCE
It seemed like forever until I'd get my ENTER score
It seemed like forever until I'd go to Melbourne for schoolies
It seemed like forever until I'd find what I was going to do now I'd finished school.
It seemed like forever to wait until November 27, 2007 to go to Indonesia
It seemed like forever for 4 years to pass

It seemed like forever...

It seems like forever until I start art
It seems like forever until prac ends
It seems like forever until I actually have a life again
It seems like forever until I get a graduate job
It seems like forever until I hopefully get to go to Indonesia again
It seems like forever until I settle down

It seems like forever, but this forever will probably never be enough time

(Currently listening to bellyfull, boy in static)

What's in a hand phone?

In Indonesia mobile phones are known as hand phones.

Yesterday was the second day on my new job (vacation care).
My phone was in my pocket.
I leant over to get a ball out of a puddle.
The phone fell out and, you guessed it, fell in the puddle.

It still works, but a call to Telmy indicated that nobody can hear me. Nor can I hear them without the loudspeaker on.

This has come after a series of problems with my hand phone. My memory got wiped in the phone, and then a new sim card was in order. Now this.

But it is OK. Tomorrow I am getting a Nokia 1208. Cheapest phone out at the moment. A much simpler model. No MP3, no bluetooth, no camera, not a lot to it. But it does have a torch. And that is a feature I want high above the rest. I already have a iPod, and a digital camera. Plus another phone on telstra with these features. Meh I just want a torch!

I used to have a CDMA handset with a torch. Best phone I ever had. Same with my last phone in Indonesia that was stolen. Other features in the phone just drain battery.