This is my story... Charlene Jacha

I can recount numerous highs and lows in my teaching experience at Lebone in 2014. In rare moments and times I felt like "Really, is this it?" and more often than not I felt like "Yeah, this is it!". My extraordinary experiences in the classroom were probably molded by the diversity of children I found in the classroom at Lebone. They are all very unique and varying in their approach to learning and  how they could get  there. At that moment I realised that I was faced with the challenge of bringing it home for each of  these little ones.

I appreciate the professional development sessions which came to my rescue every Monday. They helped me keep an open mind and gave me insight on how to differentiate my teaching style. The professional development sessions opened my eyes to a whole new world of teaching. It made me realise how wide my options were, how limitless my  thinking  can be and  how many numerous teaching styles were available to use in the classroom. At my disposal I had so many colleagues who were eager to help me down this path. Most of them emphasized to me the importance of asking for help when necessary.

New teacher's cafe gave me  the motivation to improve my teaching by revising practices and experimenting with new initiatives, which stem from reflection.  Getting together and breaking down our different classroom experiences and planning strategies was extremely helpful for me in my first year. Receiving  feedback  from others during these reflection sessions allowed me to see in depth how effective or ineffective my planning was. I realised  then  that Assumption is the lowest form of knowledge that one can ever use. I should never make the assumption that all has been learnt  in the lesson. However, I should  constantly do self assessment through self-observation and activities that foster self-analysis such as New Teacher Cafe and peer assessment.

So many times I found myself shouting, screaming and threatening my pupils. I seemingly had minimum influence on them and they hardly curled into the lesson, let alone endured it to say the least. It became clear that it  was my task as a teacher to find not only what motivates each student to learn but also what motivates them to misbehave. If I can meet them at that point and take away that motivation, we can go a long way towards a more effective classroom and learning experience.  After some introspection I realised raising my voice and screaming hysterically was not  doing much for me. Sharing this with colleagues and hearing about how they have also gone down that path made me more at ease. The input they gave me helped me realise  that students are people who have feelings and who don't want to feel cornered. They want to learn but they also want to feel as if they have some control over themselves.

I had days when I definitely questioned if I had chosen the right profession. These were days when the students seemed uninterested, too talkative, or even worse a blow up occurred and nothing got accomplished. I  also experienced many great moments while teaching. These were days when I ended so happy and enthusiastic that I knew I had selected the right profession. Thankfully on the overall, I ended up with the positive days outshining  my negative days. My hope is that the students involved with me throughout my first teaching year at Lebone were at least partially changed for the better from the experiences we shared .