reflections: thoughts on a school visit
this is my third reflection: school visit ta da!
Last Wednesday was my first school visit to George Elliot Secondary in Winfield. I was so excited I barely slept the night before. I arrived at the school perhaps overly zealous and definitely bouncing off caffeine. Perfect set-up for sitting at the back of the classroom for 2.5 hours!
In general, I was very impressed with my school. It’s the smallest high school in the district, so there is a very great community feel (I think- couldn’t really tell from one visit). I am pretty excited to start my practicum there; I will be the only student teacher from UBC-O at the school, and there are two student teachers from UVIC who will hopefully be full of advice for me when it’s my turn.
There were some things that definitely surprised me. When I was in high school, I was in French immersion, so all (well, some) of my classes were in French, and the teachers insisted on speaking French with us, no excuses. At G.E. I was placed in a Grade 9 FSL class, where the teachers spoke more English than French. I was pretty disappointed- I feel like we have so many resources to teach French and we don’t take advantage of them. As well, in an English milieu, the students have only a couple options a week to speak French and we aren’t giving it to them.
Besides that, there were many positive things in the school, such as the amount of technology in the classroom. In one class, the teacher used TV, video, cd’s, youtube, and the computer. The classes at this school are 2.5 hours long, so being able to manipulate all these different tools kept the class moving. On the point of moving, there was little opportunity to get up and stretch, so the students became a bit talkative. I think that if they had been able to move around, this might have been avoided.
My sponsor teacher offered to let me teach a Spanish 11 class while I am doing my practicum. This made me pretty nervous because my Spanish is horrible, but after discussing it with a few people, I am actually very excited for this opportunity. I guess this is what being a life long learner is. Obviously, I am pretty excited about the practicum part of this course!
