Placement 1: Renmark High School

The first time I stepped up to the teacher's plate was a Friday double: Yr. 8 Civics and Citizenship. I was terribly nervous. I had created an X on the floor with masking tape at the advice of my liaison. X marked the spot where, if I was standing, the students were quietly sitting. I was scared it wasn't going to work. They were going to throw things at me, cause a raucous, yell me out of the room...

 

To my delight they didn't and to my even greater delight, the moment I stepped on that X and started teaching, I knew I had found my calling.

 

At the end of that first lesson, an SSO who had assisted during the lesson said to me: "If I didn't know you were a student teacher I would have thought you'd been teaching for years."  

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Not all my subsequent lessons were as good as that first one; indeed, one of the primary lessons I learned on my first placement was the importance of consistency: consistency with behaviour management; setting consistently high expectations; having consistent energy. The nervous energy which had driven the success of my first lesson is essential for a novice teacher. Let that energy slip and you've lost them. 

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I taught Yr. 8 Civics and Citizenship, Yr. 9 History and Yr. 9 English.

 

One of the highlights was being involved in an integrated History/English Unit called "Making a Nation", which emphasised Indigenous histories and perspectives. I was instrumental in the integration of these two subject areas, as I taught the same Yr. 9 cohort for both subjects.

 

I designed tasks which incorporated English visual literacy skills into source analysis work in History, as well as a summative task in History which allowed students to demonstrate their learning from a novel study of Kimberley Warrior. I also revised the History program to include stories of Indigenous women and their resistance to colonialism. Previously the program had focused on male figures only. 

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Another highlight was setting up a mock trial in Yr. 8 Civics and Citizenship to learn about the various roles in Australian courts. 

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Please scroll through my report below to see mentor and liaison feedback.

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