The Alchemy of Teaching

"Every day is a new adventure."  

I can't remember who said this to me first but, in terms of secondary teaching, it pretty much sums up my experiences in schools.  Whether in St Albans or UB or Toorak, there are so many variables swirling around a school that the whole endeavour feels more than a little random.  Your lessons can swing from complete triumphs to utter failures, due to nothing to do with your lesson planning however well wrought or nonexistent it might be.  This is not to say that planning doesn't matter.  Far from it: you must plan or you'll never last a week but often this planning is more alchemy than clinical practise (sorry Melbourne University Graduate School of Education!); it can be frighteningly improvisatory, especially when your teaching load is full of subjects and year levels you've never thought about let alone taught.

One of my main problems in the classroom this year has been the students in each class (there's perhaps 2 or 3 for every class) whose English skills are so low that they can't communicate to you in even simple terms, let alone understand Geographic concepts that you're trying to get across.  I suppose this is somewhat similar to my problems last year at Brimbank, but what's different here is that these students' base English is absolutely nothing rather than Western suburbs Boganglish.  To compound these issues, a number of these students clearly are dealing with undiagnosed learning difficulties like ADHD or Asperger's or both.  They're undiagnosed because no one seems to think that they exist (a common problem in Asia actually) in the first place.  The behaviour of these kids is predictably terrible.

                                    

I've got 2 classes where this is a major problem; one in grade 6 and the other in grade 7.  The Grade 6s are a class that is universally thought to be one of the naughtiest, most disruptive and least functioning of all classes in the school.  My experiences with them have been an exasperating mix of bewilderment, anger and frustration in Term 1, topped off with a disastrous final "reflective" class on the unit.  Due to a couple random holidays, I hadn't seen them for the entire term so far, which was a happenstance that made my life immeasurably easier, until I strolled into class on Wednesday morning bracing myself for the absolute worst.  To my surprise, they were completely different: attentive, interested and dedicated.  They listened to me.  They did their work.  They were excited about my "Country of the Week" activity like never before.  My approach to them, my teaching voice, hadn't really changed I think.  The difference was that we were creating maps, so the language demands were low in favour of creative, visual intelligences that I hadn't unlocked before.  After class, I sat in shock at a completely enjoyable, stress free lesson from these well known scoundrels.

The grade 7s are something else entirely: the Jekyll & Hyde class.  The first week after holidays, I had the worst lesson of the year with them (and one of my worst since the dark days of term 1, Brimbank!). All of my plans failed.  They refused to do work and didn't respond to any of my verbal cues.  Afterwards, I had to get out of school and clear my mind.  The next week, they were great.  And then this week, they were back to their ratbag ways, although after speaking with their English teacher, they were completely insane in his class as well.

It comes down to some of the things I learnt at Brimbank last year when confronted with the worst class in the worst year level (year 9) at a school where most of the students had some serious issues (it's called Stab Albans for a reason).  It took an entire semester and several changes of approach but eventually 9M came around and we did some very good work together after several months of struggles.

• You've got to be flexible enough to keep trying new shit. 
• The kids' memories are shockingly short term.  They probably don't remember the last disaster as much as you do.
• Sometimes, it just doesn't work.
• Do what they enjoy 
• Keep it moving.  Have plans B, C, D, E, and F
• Regulate yourself; you're the adult in the room
• They're just kids 

The last point came to me when speaking with a student in 9M at Brimbank who was well known for being violent, rude, and overbearing, while also trying to deal with his severe autism and ADHD.  He had done all sorts of shit in and out of class and I hadn't made any connection with him at all until one day in the library (we had a weekly reading in the library period that was the bane of my existence in terms 1 and 2) he took me through all 200 or so pictures he took when he flew from Melbourne to Malta via Dubai.  Many of the pictures were painfully dull to outside eyes but to this kid this was the most fascinating stuff he'd ever experienced and he was just so damn happy to share it with me.  He loved planes and knew more about commercial jets and airports than anyone I'd met since a friend of mine from UBC.  I soon adjusted all his work accordingly.

The key is to find what do these kids love as much as that kid loved planes.