A Day I Will Never Forget!!!

So I have finally found the time today to read through all the blogs and I was happy to read everyone's experiences so far. I do not feel so alone lol. So as many of you know I am at Dakota Collegiate, My first week was great. I am assigned with two art teachers for the entire block. Both teachers are so different so it has been a great learning experience observing their different teaching techniques and classroom managment plans. I am student teaching 3 classes, grade 10's, grade 12 (football boys who are there for the easy credit), and grade 9's. I was having a blast helping them on their painting and multi-media projects and going on field trips with them. One field trip we went on was to the park where we had a bond fire/bbq and some students were aloud to bring their artwork to burn it in the fire as a celebration of finishing a project that they struggled on. It was very interesting and almost spiritual lol.

All was good until my first evaluation day on Monday nov. 22nd, with my grade 12 boys (shaking my head). It was the first time I had introduced a lesson to an actual high school class ever! And no one else at my school wanted to go first so I took one for the team. So of course I was nervous, and my teachers warned me that my advisor was very traditional and did not understand how an art classroom worked, as they had trouble explaining it to him in past years. Now my grade 12 class is unqiue, alot of them have failed a couple times so they are 18/19 and I am only 2 or 3 years older than them. Some of them know my friends which is scary too. Alot of these ppl took this class for an easy credit, so there is no motivation and no respect for art in general. My teacher has completely given up on them since they dont want to work and never hand anything in. Alot of them come to class stoned out of their faces, So he lets them go get food to snack on during class and lets them chat up a storm because they manage to work a little more when they talk.

So Monday comes around and I introduce a plasticine project, my intro was shortened from 10 mins to 5 becuase they were just not paying attention and were talking or texting so by screaming for attention constantly I gave up after 5 minutes. So thats fine in art classroom because once they know what to do they are supposed to go and work, because art is not about lecturing for a long time. Well as soon as I gave them plasticine they were whipping it at eachother's faces behind my back, swaring constantly, grabbing food from the caf, and picking on eachother! At one point I thought two boys were going to stab eachother with pallette knives! No matter what I said to these 2 boys they just did not take me seriously. So i tried to control the situation the best I could and and for the most part all of them accomplished to finish 1/2 of their project because I would push each one of them to work. So my advisor tore me apart in my evaluation! I wanted to die inside while he was talking to me. He wanted me to be like Mr. Wayne and to crack the whip on these boys. He said at one point that he wanted to grab the 2 misbehaving boys out of the room and give them the lecture of a lifetime. So I felt terrible and I felt like I was going to fail the entire thing. I was too nice and not firm enouigh with them, because I didnt know how to!

So The next day I called out their behaviour for 10 minutes! Me and my teacher just got so mad at them, it felt so good to vent. I told them I was being evaluated and they said to me (including to 2 bad boys) "Were so sorry miss G, we like you and we didnt know that you were being evaluated, we thought he was a foriegn exchange teacher who was just observing!" I was thinking WTF! Why didnt I tell the class before hand that he was comming to onserve me? So I told them that he was coming back in 2 days because he was concerned so they promised me they would be on their best behaviour. After the talk they felt bad, I could see it even in the two boys, I was honest with them and they respected me back. Thursday comes around and they were complete angels...... I only had to comment on a few sware words that slipped out, and kick out random ppl who walked into the class. My advisor was so happy that he saw improvment and I was saved. I do not have any more evaluations in that grade 12 class anymore so I know I will be great in the other 2 classes. But it was an experience that broke me, and I had to build myself back up... it was an experience that I learned from and will never forget.