A Week of Work is a Wonderful Thing!

For the first time since I’ve been here I had a full week of work this week. Four schools in five days! It sounds daunting when put in those terms, but I actually enjoyed being in a different school just about every day. There is something to be said about consistency and stability, but there is also something to be said about variety and spontaneity. It is really interesting at this point to see the ways that different schools are run, and to get new ideas and strategies for classroom management from watching other teachers and TAs during the week. I can’t say that I feel like I’ve done a whole lot of “teaching” so far though. As a supply teacher, most of my energy goes into class management. Man, if you think kids in Canada take advantage of on-call teachers, you ain’t seen nothing until you’ve been in a London classroom. I haven’t had any horror story days quite yet, but I have definitely had classes take over to varying degrees. Sure, kids are kids no matter where you go, but students here in London, even in Reception (Kindergarten) and Year 1, have an overdeveloped understanding of their rights in the classroom. Teachers do not get any automatic respect as an authority figure, as they often do even in some of the rougher schools in Canada. You have to earn these kids' respect, and that is fairly hard to do when you only are with them for one day.
All that being said, I had a good week and I’m really glad that work is finally picking up and am hoping for another full week coming up.