Work - The pros and the cons... - The Bear and Badger

The Daddy

Tempy wrote:

Cheers folks. I dunno. I think I can do the walk and talk, but the back end of planning is really rigorous these days and it's like learning a new language, that's going to be the hard part.

I will check M&S Outlet at The Forge tomorrow too, that sounds like a great shout!

Make sure you look out for the extra reduced stuff.

Skerret

Temps you are Dunning Krugering the shit out of this and setting a high bar for yourself. You're already doing brilliantly and learning activity design is a fucking challenging thing, so allow yourself room. I have been working with education researchers recently who publish learning design research and even they don't nail lesson plans (based on the one I've just seen for a cross faculty research project we're doing with school kids; it's about anonymisation of avatars in collaborative virtual environments btw, jolly interesting) every time.

You will be an excellent teacher, you are already proving it.

mistercrayon

Nice one temps for getting through it. Keep going man.

Syph79

Absolutely, Temps. They say those that can, teach. You've done teaching now, so you can.

Tempy

I don’t think I am doing the DK to myself, I have a lot to learn and by doing well early i’ve set a high expectation that I can’t really afford to drop. I’ve been told by my mentor that he struggled with a lot of these things too but the feedback makes it feel like I have to keep on target for the next five weeks.

poprock

I’m not sure whether this is the best place to post this, but PC Gamer are actively looking for pitches right now, for an upcoming indie-themed issue. Writing badgers might want to drop them a line. (Temps, I know you have no spare time right now. Sorry dude.)

Pitch guide from their editor here. Phil’s particularly looking for long-form features or special reports and his guide there is really super-clear about what he wants and how to pitch it.

Yossarian

Tempy write that FtL piece. You don’t need sleep.

Tempy

poprock wrote:

I’m not sure whether this is the best place to post this, but PC Gamer are actively looking for pitches right now, for an upcoming indie-themed issue. Writing badgers might want to drop them a line. (Temps, I know you have no spare time right now. Sorry dude.) Pitch guide from their editor here. Phil’s particularly looking for long-form features or special reports and his guide there is really super-clear about what he wants and how to pitch it.

I once got asked by the other PC Gamer guy to pitch articles off the bag of the MGSV vid I did a while a go. I did, and got no response after two follow ups. Fairly sure I pitched Phil to no response too. Hate pitching, you can see a golden idea dismissed cos a more established writer has plopped out a rote piece quite frequently. But aye, no time else i'd have a think.

JonB

I don't think I have anything for them. Especially as its PC games.

Tempy

So, the last two weeks have been utterly shit.

I haven't got a single piece of positive feedback for any of the lessons that I am taught. I am essentially behind (by next week I should be teaching 12 solo lessons minimum, instead I am doing 7) and everyone takes great pains to remind me about how awful all of my lessons have been, how bad my questioning is, how poor my attempts at pitching are, now I don't have a teacher voice which I was supposed to have yesterday because I got feedback telling me I should have it and my assessor feels I didn't take that on board.

Every piece of feedback is critical and personal: I'm not clear enough, I don't have the confidence, I can't jump into the persona that I need to be in like everyone else can. Way of talking is too rushed and garbled. My posture is wrong. my attitude is incorrect. The way I come across is wrong - one teacher asked me on the first day if I could teach any book, ever, outside the realms of reality, with full support and unlimited resources and a perfect class, what would it be? So I said Pale Fire by Nabokov. I have been reminded of this as a negative thing three times since.

I am determined to get through the next four weeks but I am very close to accepting that this is not for me.

g.man

YOU CAN FUCKING DO THIS

tigersgogrrr

Don't give up, T. Everyone has their own style and I don't know many who went through teacher training without being on the point of tears at some point, most of whom went on to become excellent teachers.

The Daddy

PM me your email addy temps and I’ll send you a really good higher order questioning template (designed for use in English). Should help you structure the questioning elements of your lessons.

Yossarian

Yep, I went through a lot of this stuff when doing my TEFL training. Eventually I had one lesson which I almost walked away from before it had even started I was so nervous and feeling so down on my abilities, somehow I walked in and, out of nowhere, a lot of this stuff just clicked.

Stick with it, it may just turn around for you.

Tempy

@tigro I know that, and I have heard similar, but I am getting the fundamentals wrong: questioning, modelling, pitching.

My attempts to implement them in the classroom fall to pieces because instinct takes over, and I don't know how to stop it. Because my instinct is apparently to be shit at everything.

I do stupid things like get given a golden opportunity in my lesson to riff on a student's answer, and just glibly dismiss it because my brain can't see the wood for the trees - very specifically in this lesson it was a student saying that a picture of the woods reminded her of the wood from little read riding hood, and I was like "great, that's really good, next?" like a total imbecile.

g.man

You are not shit, you are just learning.

JonB

Sounds like the wrong kind of feedback as well though. It really should be more constructive, especially at this early stage. If they're just telling you this stuff without adding anything about why it's wrong, or what strategies you might employ to improve, then they're not doing a good job themselves. But even if that's the case, keep asking questions whenever they tell you this stuff. Why was that book a bad choice? What exercises would they suggest for posture, delivery etc.?

The other thing of course is that the more you stress about it and the more these criticisms stress you, the harder it will be to relax and do the job. Take it seriously, of course, but don't put too much pressure on yourself.

JonB

g.man wrote:

You are not shit, you are just learning.

Exactly. Don't be so hard on yourself. Maybe this stuff does come more naturally to some people, but it doesn't mean you can't get it. You know you're smart enough.

Diluted Dante

Has anyone actually given you feedback on how to do that?

Tempy

They do give constructive stuff too, but I guess the problem with being a student is planning for your next lesson is tough enough, let alone adding feedback in. It often feels like I get told to do something and if it isn't there next lesson then it's a total failure. I thought I'd established a better Teacher Voice this week, then my observed lesson went a bit awry, and I got dragged for having "not made an attempt at creating a teacher voice." so who knows.

I got asked if I had any ideas for my crit lesson on Friday yet and I said "I can't see that far ahead in my planning yet" and the response was "a week is nothing, you should be really thinking about this". Which I know is true in teacher terms... but how can I figure out what I'm doing in a week if I have to be constantly thinking about my fundamentals? I know they're pushing me hard cos this is a trial by fire process... but I am not seeing any results other than a knock to my confidence and self worth so far.

Yossarian

It almost seems to me, and forgive me if I’m wrong on this, like your focus in the classroom is on delivering your plan to the extent that you aren’t giving yourself the mental space to be dealing with what’s happening in front of you.

Maybe you just need to slow everything down a bit so you have a bit more thinking time in front of the class?

Tempy

I think you're right, but the balance between thinking space and dead-air that gets criticised as a slack pace is a hard thing to manage mentally.

I have some ideas for things to help me out, physical resources and so on, so I hope they help.

Yossarian

Less rigid plans were absolutely key for me personally in teaching. Thinking on my feet got the best out of me and allowed me to follow where the lesson took me and the class rather than constantly attempting to make the class adhere to the structure in my head.

Yossarian

Tempy wrote:

I think you're right, but the balance between thinking space and dead-air that gets criticised as a slack pace is a hard thing to manage mentally.

I have some ideas for things to help me out, physical resources and so on, so I hope they help.

I reckon that a slack pace is probably the lesser of two evils at this stage in your training. These sorts of things are skills that need to be honed and eventually they’ll be like second nature. It’s easy to feel panicky not talking with 20 or 30 pairs of eyes looking at you, but you’re the teacher, you’re in control. If you need a bit of time to think, give yourself that time to think.

Yossarian

Anyway, that’s probably enough of my reckoning, there are far more experienced teachers here who I’m sure can offer better advice than me.

Hugs Tempy.

Lord_Griff

Who the fuck said Pale Fire was a bad idea!? I will have them erased.

GooberTheHat

What the fuck is a "teacher voice"?

Yossarian

One which commands attention, essentially.

Tempy

Yeah. Apparently all the effort I try to put into mine doesn't matter cos it just comes out sounding like my own anyway.

I think re: the Pale Fire thing, there's some accidental class-ism coming in. I walk, talk and dress like a middle class intellectual whose parents are uni professors, but the reality is i'm a boy from a broken working class home. My voice comes from the fact I have a grandmother with a very RP voice because she was from Stoke and had to change her accent when she started teaching, because that was how you did it back then. I spent a lot of time with her because my parent's divorced when I was 4. I don't talk RP, but I talk "more proper" than the rest of the staff who are Scottish or Irish.

So they think everything I am doing is to show off my brains, or my intellectualism, without realising it's just who I am by accident. I can't even talk about what I am really into either, as the English Staffroom has already sneered at all stuff the after-school hobby club that does D&D and boardgames does, so I just exist in this weird unreality version of myself that's apparently a disable pseudo-intellectual wanker (easy at the back).

LivDiv

GooberTheHat wrote:

What the fuck is a "teacher voice"?

I don't know but I hope it is Tempy doing a Peggy Hill impression to 10 year olds.

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