What goes around comes around what goes up must come down...

This song was being played on Class 95 as I was driving home from NIE after a damn long Thursday packed full of lessons. I quickly thought to myself...oops, yeah, I'll probably be paying countless times over once it is my turn to teach the class during the micro-simulated teaching sessions.

In my defence, albeit a poor one, acting as a dysfunctional, attention-seeking, naughty, vocal, disrespectful etc student ain't as easy as one thinks. It is actually very exhausting to be naughty as after geography class, I am almost always dead-tired.

Firstly, kudos to LY and YZ today for their micro-teaching efforts. I always wonder what the heck will happen and how I will handle the various situations thrown at them.

Ok let me start with LY's lesson on Karst landscape today. First of all, in defence of LY from fellow bloggers who might post and comment on how 'chim' or difficult LY's lesson on Karst was, remember that Karst landscape is a topic that is found within the A Levels syllabus and not the O Levels syllabus. That said, I felt that though it is evident to everyone that the topic is indeed difficult and thus problematic to teach to a bunch of Secondary 3 Express student from a neighbourhood school, LY could still have taught us better when explaining the various terminology and features of a Karst Landscape. Granted that we probably do not have the mental faculties as yet to understand Karst Landscape, I felt that LY could have worked on her presentation further and utilise her pictures to facilitate our understanding of the subject. Kudos to her for the excellent visual presentation as that made understanding easier but it should really be reinforced with less "chimonology" terms so that we might be able to absorb the topic better.

The real-life samples of rocks which she gave the class to look at also really helped. But I wonder about her technique of confiscating our EZ-Link cards or whatever cards that we might have if we happen to perform acts of transgressions, such as losing or destroying the sample, being naughty in class etc. On one hand it might be a small deterrent as students might not want anything of theirs confiscated, but on the other hand, those students like SuperLambanana and myself, who had our cards confiscated earlier on in the class felt that since our cards were already confiscated, we were now given free rein to be as naughty as possible since nothing worse can happen as our cards were already gone.

Additionally, in the event that LY loses or misplaces any of the cards that she had earlier confiscated from the students, things might turn really ugly especially if the cards are important.

Another point to note will be LY's use of a worksheet for us to fill in. Activity A is fine. But I question the usefulness of Activity B since the main task that the students needed to do was to actively fill in the blanks. Filling in of the blanks is fine, don't get me wrong. But I felt that LY was being too rigid when she only allowed one answer for each blank, this might prevent students from wanting to think further on the questions given. For example, in my (yes, me again) question to her on whether impermeable could be used instead of pervious (since different perspective on the question will lead to different answers), LY had insisted that no, only pervious was to be used, which in my mind prevents students from thinking laterally and thus constraining his/her thought process. After that scenario, I felt discouraged and did not actively think about the topic anymore. Flexibility in my opinion, is key to such a situation. Students should be encouraged to think as much as possible.

One last point to note on LY's teaching would be the classroom management aspect. I felt that LY could further improve on her delivery when reprimanding students. For example, her tone should reflect the seriousness of her situation and the words used must not be minced to show confidence. Additionally, she could have worked on her eye contact more to really show that she means business.

All in all, it was a rather well-planned class and she did manage to handle the rambunctious students fairly well.

Now let me go on to YZ's class. In her class, I played a complete opposite of what I did in LY's class, and that is now, to be a 'smart-alecky' student competing with Lily to be the teacher's pet. Granted I was also naughty and threw paper planes but I was comparing with Bananagal how aerodynamics and the design of the plane will affect the way the plane flies heh.

Clap clap to YZ for noticing how Bananagal and myself did not accord her the proper respect and refused to stand up when greeting her. She handled us well in that aspect by ensuring that everyone was ready and stood up to greet her.

But as soon as that happened, I noticed the first mistake that YZ made. She distributed the worksheets immediately after lessons commenced and that was a big boo boo since instructions were not given first as to what we should do with them. By the time she had started her presentation slides, I could see that many were more engrossed with looking at the worksheet than paying attention to her.

Additionally, YZ should really make the effort in addressing the students by their names rather than saying "eh eh eh" whenever we were getting noisy. Calling students by their first name will be beneficial as not only does it show that the teacher cares enough to know the students by their first name, it also means that the teacher can specifically pin-point who she is talking to. A general 'eh' makes students wonder who she is reprimanding or instructing to stop making noise and what this ultimately mean is that the students will continue to make noise since they did not feel that the 'eh' meant them.

Ok, let me insert something positive before people think that my entire post is all negative. I really respect her and think that she did a marvellous job in using props to make us understand the complex topic of plate tectonics, which coincidentally is my pet subject. Her use of props allowed students to visualise the topic better and complemented with her visual aids and diagrams presented in the powerpoint, I felt that YZ did a remarkable job in explaining such a complex topic. It also shows that she had put in a lot of effort in lesson preparation.

Ok, back to areas on which she can improve on. Being a smart-alecky student who is actually really passionate about plate tectonics (in real-life), I asked YZ questions that were more complex than what she had presented, hoping that she might be able to explain them. But alas, came the next boo boo. YZ should have handled me better when I asked such more complicated questions as it shows that I was actually thinking about her lessons and were perplexed over certain issues. YZ should have answered my question directly rather than asking me to go home to research for myself as other students might have the same question and thus it might have been beneficial to answer the question. Additionally, it might make the teacher seem that she does not know what she is teaching and so, lose some credibility with students. Granted that teachers do not know it all but when a teacher does not know, he/she can admit that he/she does not know and will check it up and promise to get back to the student. I don't think that a student should be dismissed or neglected just because he asked a complex yet valid question as it might discourage the student from asking such questions in the future, thus cramping on his learning method.

With respect to the above, I interpreted YZ's action as herself not wanting to deviate from the lesson plan which she had set herself so as to not lose the flow of the lesson. Although valid, I feel strongly that for this aspect, some leeway could have been made to facilitate students' thinking and to encourage them to do so. Again the keyword of flexibility is in order.

Ok, back to another thing positive. YZ did really well to validate a student when she asked a question and the student answered correctly. That served as a form of encouragement as well. With regards to W's asthma attack, in all fairness to YZ, I have absolute confidence that such a scenario will eventually be handled appropriately by YZ since every teacher would have known their own school's policy on a sudden medical situation happening in class. YZ handled that fairly in allowing LY to accompany W to the sick bay.

Couple of things more before I sign off from this long post: YZ should have more proper eye-contact with the students as she did not manage to read some of the visual cues that were being given out by the students. To use me as an example, I was showing through my facial expression how I was confused over certain slides which she presented but instead of addressing my 'potential' question, she had skipped to another slide. Reading visual cues in my opinion, is also a highly important skill that teachers must have. One last thing, YZ also mainly focused on the "problem" kids and failed to observe her other students. Even when us "problem" kids were quiet and paying attention, her focus was mainly on us and she failed to see how SJ has been sleeping under her nose all these while. That ain't fair...isn't it? Heh.

Phew, sorry for the rambling, took me an hour to write all these. YZ, don't get me wrong if you perceive that I have mainly negative things to say about your teaching k? Coz I don't. I still think your idea of using props and the photos you wanted us to work on were really great ideas and generally, you did well considering you just came back from Scotland too! Clap Clap!