Number 4. Get my teaching degree

This one turned out to be a little more complicated... more due to the fact that I decided to move state once, move house twice, and then leave the country while still studying! What a year!

In January 2010 I attened the orientation at the university in Sydney, it was my frist real trip to Sydney and what I remmeber best about the trip is getting yelled at by a bus driver, nearly ending up in tears, and really really wanting to go home all within the first 4 hours of being there! Other than that the orientation was a bit of a blur, sitting through child protection seminars, having photo's take for student ID cards, and mingling with other people who were there to get their Grad Dip. It was a 1 year course called a Post Graduate Diploma of Education (secondary) which means you have to have a degree before you can study for this. The reason I had chosen that particular University was because it was the only one that offered the course fully online and within a year (apparently this has now changed...) and I didnt know how dificult the University staff were going to be when I signed up!

With the 3 day orientation finished it was back to Melbourne to start studying... and start sorting out which schools I wanted to go to for my first placement. It was about a week later I made the decision to move to Perth at the end of that month. It took me 26 days to pack everything I wanted to keep into boxes to go into storage, sell everything else and decide what was going to fit into my lancer for the drive across Australia. (See Number 3. Drive across the Nullarbor for more details of my trip!) The main reason I chose Perth was because mum had moved there a couple of years before and there is nothing like moving back home when you go back to Uni...this is just a warning if you are reading this mum - I may be back when I get stuck into a PhD...though it might be longer than 8 months for that one!

When I got to Perth it was then a frantic mission to find a school that would take me for placement in short notice, I still had a month but my university had apparently decidd I was too much work by that point so told me I had to arrange it myself, which I was actually happier doing since they were / are so completely useless. The first school I called accepted me (phew!) and I went in to meet my mentoring teacher the next day. The school was called "Perth Modern School" - Perth Mod for short - and my mentoring teacher's name was Sol. It was a truly incredible experience. I went in there completely terrified to begin with, having no idea what to expect, and not even really sure where to start. Perth Mod is a school for the gifted and academically advanced - and these kids really were geniuses! Sol was a bit of a genius too, and one of the most enthusiastic teachers I have ever met, he was truly passionate about teaching and I couldnt have asked for a better mentoring teacher at my first school.

I had so much fun preparing lessons for these kids and I really did feel like I was only just keeping one step ahead of them, especially when I ended up teaching geology to the year 8's, though fortunately there was a real authentic geologist teaching at the school who was happy to let me pick his brains...and pick through his resources! I did have a small breakdown after one of my classes crashed, they tell me there are always good and bad lessons and sometimes what works with one group will fall apart with another, well this lesson was a complete flop...a mess...the kids weren't engaged and it just didnt work. Then I had to go home and prepare lessons for the next day...so I went home and cried for about an hour before mum got me to get it together and reminded me that not all lessons were going to be like that (another benefit of living at home!) thanks mum! The whole prac went really well, aside from the one moment of panic, and I got a glowing report from my metoring teacher which is always really nice - it was so nice I cried again...though this time it was happy tears (I am such a girl...lol).

Then it was essay time - and based on not wanting to offend anyone if you really want to know what I think of the University, their course materials, and the innappropriate material they attempt to shove at you please feel free to ask - I wont be making that public! Got through all my essays...and did really well... except for barely scraping through in "bible studies" which was a compulsory unit - it wouldnt be the first time I have nearly flunked a religious education class...though I think the last time it had more to do with the fact that I upset the nuns.

For my second prac I decided to go somewhere completely different, I chose the 3rd worst school in Western Australia, a school known for behavious management problems - and with a teacher that was the head of the department and so had "the behavious management group" for her year 8 social studies class. Here I would like to take a moment to recognise that teacher, her name is Rosinda, and she was named teacher of the year in 2008. She has been referred to in the Perth papers as Saint Rosinda and she is truly an inspiration. Just like Sol she is enthusiatic and motivated, driven, and truly cares about her students - but where Sol was a relatively new teacher Rosinda is still that way after nearly 30 years of teaching. The world is a better place because of teachers like Rosinda and the hundreds of hours she puts into preparing and helping kids that don't always get a lot of support, if any. She pours all her energy, blood, sweat, tears and passion into her teaching. As for me - talk about lucky! 2 amazing teachers as my mentoring teachers during my prac!

This prac was completely different though, rather than keeping one step ahead of the students and having them suck me dry of information every class, the struggle with these students was to get them to engage at all. The behaviour management classes were definietly and eye opener - I saw behaviour from these kids that I would have been killed for at that age! The funniest thing though is that by the end of that prac I felt that I had formed a greater bond with these students, after only 5 weeks, I got notes from a few students, a gift from one of my favourites, and even the girls in the behaviour management class made a card for me (spelling errors and all!). It was not that it was a better or a worse experience than Perth Mod, just completely different, and in some ways more rewarding. A lot of these kids had little or no support at home, and to have someone show faith in them and believe that they could achieve things made a real difference in their lives. It also bacame a lot of un to come up with new ways to teach them things so that they would get involved with the classes.

I woul also like to make special mention of my two year 11 students; Declan and Heather. It was a strange class, due to lack of numbers the year 11 and year 12 (2nd to last and final year of school) history classes had been rolled into one - which was an absolute nightmare for the teacher because the year 12 students demand a lot of time and they are two completely different units / subjects. The year 12's were doing Soviet Russia and the Year 11's were doing Nazi Germany. It was a great opportunity for me as a prac teacher - I got to take the two year 11 students off to the library for what was really more like a tutoring session than a lesson. These students were incredibly intelligent, and engaged, and interesting as well as interested! These classes were so much fun, we would really just talk - we would go through original documents from the time (for the history geeks out there these are referred to as "primary sources") and then discuss what they meant, what impacts they had, and why people may have felt and acted the way that they did at the time. Wehn it came to "in class essay" time I had no concerns for these two - I knew they were going to do well - and I was allowed to mark them first before Rosinda hada look. I marked them and wrote a full page of comments for each - and I wasnt being biased when I gave them both A+'s...especially since Rosinda agreed! These are two students who are going to go a long way and I really do feel lucky that I was given the opportunity to be a part of their education, even if it was only for 5 weeks, they affected me as much as I hope I had an impact on them.

Then it was essay time again...ugh. I had completed a substantial number of the essays before I went on prac which really turned out to be a blessing because in my first week of prac I made the decision to head overseas and teach - and after I sent a few applications I got a job in South Korea teaching English - and I was due to leave 2 weeks after my prac ended! As it was I completed the last couple of essays in South Korea and submitted them from where I am now. I waited and waited for my final grades and the day they went up it was time to celebrate - I passed everything with flying colours...it was official...I was a qualified teacher! Just had to wait for the actual degree to be conferred and posted to me so I could get a payrise... among other things!

So it's now February 2011 and I am just waiting for the degree to be posted to me - I may even hang it on the wall in my apartment here for a little while - after the drama's I had trying to prove my degree in Korea I am certainly not going to get it framed! I have been teaching here in Korea for 4 months now and I adore my students - its a little different teaching here because I have a co-teacher - and its not nearly as intellectually stimulating because the kids may be 15 or 16 years old but they have very limited english...but still a great experience!

In conclusion I would like to say thank you to everyone that helped and supported me along the way...special thanks to my mentoring teachers, and of course to mum who not only supported me but read every essay I wrote and was a marvellous spell check! Thanks1