I was super stressed going into my practicum as I mentioned in my earlier post I was not entirely happy about my placement. I was feeling very unconfident with my skill level in the area that I was teaching and I wanted to make sure that I would make a good impression on all of those key players that will influence your career. Another added stress is that I contracted hand foot and mouth disease the week before my practicum began. This left me feeling under planned and overwhelmed heading into my practicum.

I decided that for my practicum that I was going to do my 80%, right from the start. I made this decision because it was the start of a new semester and I wanted to set the tone for my classes right away. I feel that this worked in my favour as I felt like these were my classes and the students looked at me as their teacher and not someone just coming in. In Surrey we lost 3 full days of school due to snow, this apparently is very rare in Surrey as they are known for never closing school. Since these 3 days happened at the beginning of the new semester it set back the progress for the class as these would have been days that safety testing would have been done.

I implemented a lot of new ideas into the class. For my grade 8 rotations I created a string art unit where the students would create a design for their project and using all hand tools they would fabricate the base that the string art would be put on. My S.A. was very impressed with this project and used it as an example for a presentation that he did for the school district. I also brought in a docking station project for my grade 9 /10 class. In this I had them design their own docking station create a working prototype constructed out of cardboard. This was a big moment in my practicum! I was so taken aback by the interest and ideas that were generated by the students. They were fully into this project and could not wait to begin creating their projects. Speaking of my grade 9 / 10 class, THIS CLASS WAS TOUGH!! I had an LST teacher come in and identify all the students she has worked with in this class which turned out to be the majority of them. She was impressed when she witnessed them all hard at work and on task. At the end of the practicum this was by far my favourite class I worked with. I put in that hard work to get to know the students and I introduced them to projects that were meaningful and uniquely theirs.

My relationship with my S.A was touch and go. On one hand he was very informative and had some great feedback. I think the thing that stands out is that we had entirely different teaching styles. His biggest feedback was that I needed to be more mean, which I didn’t see the point in because I was having no behaviour problems. There was also a number of times that he would say that he wanted to have another specific TC at the school. This comment was a bit of a blow and made me feel very underappreciated and made me want to withdraw from my practicum. I felt very jealous at the end of my practicum when I saw pictures and messages about TC’s hanging out with their SA’s.
Overall my long practicum was full of learning experiences and it solidified my choice in careers. If I could do it again I would have asked to be moved to a school where I would have had more variety in courses taught, especially one with a visual media option.

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