College Classroom

The alarm went, not 5 mins earlier, as we had planned, but at the usual 6.00. Then there was a tractor going at 30mph, and a bit of a queue, so my morning walk into college had be a quick one.

Today was our first day of "observation" - watching one of our tutors teach a class in preparation for our first day of teaching on Friday. We had a 2 hour language class to observe (and which I must also write up when I get a moment), and then we had some discussion about preparing for our lessons on Friday.

Well, it's teaching, but not as I've ever known it!

I didn't hear a single swear word. Nothing got thrown. Nobody called anyone anything that isn't repeatable on blipfoto. Everybody had a pen, and even their own paper. Nobody said "this is boring Miss, I'm not doing it". Nobody threatened to "get their parents in". Everyone was "on task", even after 2 hours of work. There were no sanctions given out, no incident forms to complete. The teacher left the room to collect a pile of dictionaries and everyone carried on working.

Even my very best behaved classes in my gentlest school (a lovely place in East London) needed SOME classroom management to keep them in order. This adult education thing is something else completely.

Add to that the fact that I don't have to enforce rules that *I* don't believe in - school ties, bags, coats, hats etc (in my last job kids would get told off if their ties weren't tied properly, but not if they'd failed to bring a pen and pencil, which I thought was nuts) and I'm wondering why I didn't do this years ago.

The other trainees sat still in their places throughout the lesson. I didn't. I'm used to walking around in classroom observations, so I looked at what the students were doing in their own working times. I also learned all their names, since they're the class we're going to be teaching, even though they'll have "name badges" when we teach them - old habits die hard!

This is where I'll be teaching from on Friday - just thought I'd get that in, since I seem to have a habit of forgetting about the picture these days! Oops!

After college I picked up one or two things from town, popped in to Scharwenka's then came home via the doc's surgery to collect my prescription.

On arrival home I was capable of one thing only - cleaning up the rat cage a bit and playing with my gorgeous boys. They're so wonderful and cheering to come home to, even when absolutely exhausted.

And the rest of the evening I was almost too tired to do anything at all - except eat the rather delicious lasagne the Wonderspouse had prepared for supper! I was even too tired to read in the bath.

Zzzzzzzzz