Juggling teaching and study

And here I thought that juggling work and study was hard enough! Teaching can be incredibly draining and by the end of the day, you don’t want to be staring at a computer screen do to University work (well, I certainly didn’t!)

Time management is always a tough thing for me. I want to put my 100% into everything and I’m not willing to do less. Having to juggle teaching, where my students deserve 100%, and my study, where I need to give 100% otherwise, I may not pass the subject/s made it a rough year. Imagine this, an early career teacher having to teach 4 subjects and still maintaining a full-time study load. Essentially having to keep my grips on six subjects. Six. That was rough.

I am now at the end of term 3, I have submitted two assignments late because I chose to put my students first, do I regret it? Nope. Not one bit. My students needed to come first, they needed the stability of knowing that they were number 1 for me (in a professional sense). If I had a free lesson, I would prioritise doing some university study so I didn’t fall too behind. This sort of worked as it gave me a break from consistently doing work but also gave me a greater opportunity to become distracted by everything else.

I also needed to realise that burning myself out, gets me nowhere. It does not help anyone or anything. So developing some coping mechanisms for when it got too much really helped too. I would spend weekends with family and friends. I would prioritise the people in my life over the work I had to do. I would go out for date nights with my partner. These things kept me sane.

So, having rambled on for a while, do I have any pearls of wisdom for someone who wishes to do what I have done (or similar)? Nope, everyone is different. Everyone has different study patterns, motivation levels and the ability to multitask much better than I. When juggling many balls, remember that some are plastic and can be picked up later. Prioritise the glass ones and make sure that you are one of the glass ones. Remember your self-care and your own sanity.

First Year Tips and Tricks

Your first year out of your teaching degree is one of the hardest that you will do. You are new, and you still have a lot to learn. You are hesitant and not wanting to stuff it up. I’ve been there this year and these are my top tips.

          Coffee in the AM and your beverage of choice in the PM.

There are some days where you will only be able to function on caffeine in the morning and will then need to have a beverage at night (AKA a glass of wine or an aperitif). You will need the fortification to get through the day and to get through the marking at night.

          Prepare, prepare, prepare

Make sure you are prepared, with Plan A, B, and C. And for good measure, add Plan D in there too. Be prepared for a black out or a kid telling you to “f**k off”, or for some students to start bawling or a fight. Be prepared for students who are Autistic, for those who have ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety, depression. You will face all of this and more during your first few years and at times you will have no idea what to do. Hence, prepare, prepare, prepare.

(Unless you have a worldwide pandemic. Nothing prepares you for that!)

         Learn from your co-workers

Your co-workers are your greatest allies – unless you severely piss them off (which I don’t recommend). Share resources and take what you can from them. You will be able to learn a lot from them and be able to adapt their resources. You can also look at their professional practice and learn a lot from it. You can decide what you will borrow and what you won’t.

  Fake it until you make it

Confidence, people, confidence. Some of us have it, others have to work for it. If you don’t feel confident, don’t let it show. The more you ‘fake it’ the more confident you will begin to feel until it becomes natural. And the best part? The students you have won’t know.

These are my top 4 tips, but at the end of the day; you do you. You follow what you think is right and what you think is going to help you create your career. Ultimately, you are in charge of your own destiny.

2020: The year of COVID-19

COVID-19 is still rocking Australia. Victoria is still in lockdown; some states are opening up to South Australia and we still can’t go international. We are still sanitising our hands and, in some places, wearing masks.

But we are getting better in adapting to it – slowly.

COVID-19 shut down didn’t affect me too much. Yeah, it was a pain to not be able to go down to the pub for a meal and a drink. It was annoying as hell to not be able to buy toilet paper or have restrictions on basic things (#panicbuying) but overall, I wasn’t too affected by it.

I worked my butt off to get the lesson and unit plans structured for a move to online learning. I planned like I never had planned before and at the end of the day, I was thankful for it. I like to think that my students were thankful for it too as it gave them a sense of structure.

That was one thing I tried to give to all of my students: structure. Structure in the lesson flow, in my expectations, in how I approached them. I also let them see me as human. Many of my students were being negatively affected by COVID-19 in many, many ways and I wanted them to see that I was human and affected by it as much as them – even if it was a simple “Was planning on going out for dinner but we can’t any more”. They knew I was their teacher but they could also see me as human.

One of the hardest things we faced was the feeling of the unknown. Of not knowing if some students could come to school, if people we knew were going to have jobs or not, of if (or when) we would make the move to online, distance learning. Students were restless, their attention was rock bottom and work submission was for the most part even more sporadic than usual.

But we survived. Writing this at the end of Term 3, we still have one term to go, but the hard part is over. We have learnt how flexible we can be, how quickly we can pivot from our original plan to aa completely new one. We learnt the in’s and out’s of Zoom and Microsoft Teams and how to (hopefully) avoid the pitfalls.

Families, friends, strangers and more discovered how valued teachers are and how much work we actually do. They learnt that teaching isn’t just a ‘soft’ career, that a shit load of planning, hard work and heart goes into what we do.

And that is the one thing I am probably most grateful for.

New future

Gotta love changes! Wisdom’s out (all four!) and a contract teaching Year 8 Humanities and English and Year 10 English (2 classes). I’m loving it and really enjoying the challenge!

A change is a good thing!

Well, I’m in for a big September!

Firstly, the assignments due and all the work associated.  But most importantly, I have been offered (and I accepted!) an opportunity to work a four-week contract in a local high school! To protect the privacy of staff and students at the high school, I am not going to name it but I will be teaching Year 11 English and overseeing a Student Teacher with a Year 9, 10 and 12 English class. It’s exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time!

I can’t wait and I’ll keep you updated!

INF533 – Assignment 2: Digital Texts Reflection

Digital texts are becoming more and more prevalent within our society. As students, we reach for websites and online journals before looking at books when doing research. At home, we look for audiobooks to listen to while cooking, at the gym, or in the car. We look to buy e-books for textbooks or for pleasure reading rather than purchasing paperback or hardback books. As a generalisation, people don’t have large book collections anymore; they talk about how many books they have on their Kindles or iPads instead.

Digital texts are defined as “audio, visual or multimodal texts produced through digital or electronic technology” (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], n.d. para 1). This particular definition was chosen due to my primary area of teaching and because I would be using digital texts within the classroom or in a secondary school library more so than in any other area. Digital texts can be a wide range of different formats, from audio and e-books to interactive books with videos and hyperlinks to even mobile apps and movies.

When reading or using a digital text, I do miss the feel of paper and being able to annotate (within reason!) it with my own thoughts and putting sticky notes on the pages where I have done some analysis. I am fairly ‘old school’ in this regard and dislike using digital versions of texts; however, I can see a use for them within a classroom and I am highly likely to use them when I teach.

The use of varying digital texts is set against the rapid growth within the technological field as a whole. Many of our students have grown up with iPads and mobile phones within easy reach and knowing instinctively how to use them. Students, at the same time, are so far removed from the ‘conventional’ literacy demands of study such as looking to printed texts for information and instead relying on online sources.  However, at the same time, “web-based learning environments, notions of connectivity, the potential of social networking, digital and mobile technologies are permeating … not only through student practice but in terms of dominant institutional drivers” (Lea & Jones, 2010, p. 378). This article goes further to highlight that an ever-growing reliance on digital texts places a growing burden on the level of government-led funding in order to harness the required technologies of the age. The overall use  – and therefore the purpose – of a digital text is to enhance the learning experience, some schools can do this through high fees, while others rely on government grants and donations. Some schools can provide a large number of digital texts and access to them, whereas others struggle to provide the basics. A  digital text should, in conjunction with enhancing the learning experience, complement the curriculum of the jurisdiction or the assessment tasks in the unit of work.

So, all of this beggars the question, what makes a good digital text? Is it the format it is in? Is it the interactivity, and accessibility of digital texts? I believe that it is a good mix of all of that and more. A good digital text should have good content, have good long-lasting value, be accessible, interactive and above all, be enjoyed by students and teachers alike.

Of the three texts I reviewed, I preferred the Bible app, which did come as a surprise to me. If I were teaching Religious Education, I would use the app as a way of supplementing the curriculum by participating in one of the plans it offers as a means of homework or formative assessment. I would also use it as a supplementary mechanism of understanding the Bible and its contents, both for my student’s understanding and my own. Being able to use the text alongside my students is one thing that I look for when evaluating any form of resource – digital or not.

I believe that whether we, on a personal level, like digital texts, they are here to stay and we should try and use them in our classes and libraries as best as we can. We should be mindful of the ever-changing technology and be willing to adapt our practices where necessary.

References

INF533 – Assignment 2: E-book as a PDF review

The final digital text I am reviewing is a PDF version of the Year 8 Geography Alive textbook. This textbook is written for the Australian Curriculum so can be used within Australia, regardless of location. This textbook covers the following areas:

  • Unit 1: Landforms and Landscapes
    • Chapter 1: Introducing landforms and landscapes
    • Chapter 2: Landscapes formed by water
    • Chapter 3: Desert Landscapes
    • Chapter 4: Mountain Landscapes
    • Chapter 5: Rainforest Landscapes
  • Unit 2: Changing Nations
    • Chapter 6: Urbanisation
    • Chapter 7: The rise and rise of urban settlements
    • Chapter 8: Planning Australia’s urban future

Each unit has an inquiry project at the end of it and that brings all the individual chapters together in one cohesive assignment; and has a glossary and index at the end. The PDF textbook is in full colour and is able to be printed in either colour or black and white, depending on individual needs. The PDF document could be shared within school software (DayMap, ClassDojo etc) and well as being stored on a communal drive for easy access for temporary relief teachers. As this is a PDF document, there is no ability to enter student responses on it however text can be highlighted and comments made in a side bar of the document. This is limiting factor of the Adobe PDF document program rather than a limit of the PDF textbook.

The ‘how to use the textbook’ section does mention that there is the ability to link to the myWorld Atlas as well as ProjectsPLUS, however, when I attempted to use these functions, they would not work. I am presuming that this is due to the PDF nature of the textbook rather than working within an online version of the textbook with full capabilities. The PDF textbook does give the teacher and class a good starting point, regardless of whether it has the online aspects or not. Teachers are able to base formative or homework assessment off the tasks outlined within the PDF textbook and this can be of benefit for early career teachers or those teaching the subject for the first time.

I would recommend that Teacher Librarians organise for this particular textbook as well as others within the series to be purchased and available for all teachers to access. Having looked at the website that purchases would be made, it is not unreasonable to presume that bulk orders could be made for the school use as well as a mix of e-book and physical books within the order.

As a teacher with no Geography experience, bar what I have seen on practicums, this is a really great resource for gaining an understanding of what can be – and should be – taught within the classroom as well as a more in-depth at the sections individually. As it is tailored to the Australian Curriculum, any teacher can use it which I think is a really great design by the editors as it allows the textbook to be moved freely without restraint.

The book that the author is reading, and yes, it's a paperback!
The book that the author is reading, and yes, it’s a paperback!

This text can be purchased from https://www.jacaranda.com.au/ in both the e-book and the physical book form; as well as other books in the Geography for the Australian Curriculum series. Overall, I would use PDF’s or e-books within my professional life but on a personal level, I think I will stick to paperback!

***

Mraz, J., Bedson, C., Westhorpe, C., McMeekin, T., Gibson, K., & Dempster, A. et al. (2013). Geography alive 8 for the Australian curriculum (1st ed.). Brisbane, Queensland: John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.

INF533 – Assignment 2: YouVersion Bible App + Audio, Everyday Verse, Free review

I have chosen a Bible App to review, YouVersion Bible App + Audio, Everyday Verse, Free (referred to as YouVersion Bible App) published by Life.Church. This app has a rating of 4.7/5 and has over 2 million reviews. Of the Bible Apps on the Google Play Store (I have an Android device), this one was the most recommended after the advertisements and having looked at other apps, this was the most comprehensive.

The YouVersion Bible App gives the user a Bible verse of the day as well as a corresponding picture that can be saved to their device or shared to social media platforms. Users are able to connect with friends and can gain badges to show different achievements within the app. The badges can be for something as simple as creating a note about a particular Bible verse. Users also are able to highlight relevant sections of the verses that they are most drawn to and can revisit those particular sections later. There are also offline versions of the Bible that can be downloaded for times when an Internet connection is unavailable.

Different languages are available, including French, German, Afrikaans, Arabic and even Pitjantjatjara; as well as different versions of the Bible. Versions of the Bible include English Standard Version (ESV), King James Version (KJV) and Modern English Version (MEV); however, there are several more to choose from. This allows for use of the app within classes where English may not be the language of instruction or for the app to be used within language classes, even if the school’s main language of instruction is English. The app can be customised to suit the Bible that is used within the specific Christianity based religion and it is quite easy to move between different versions of the Bible.

There is no cost associated with the app unless a user chooses to purchase a reading plan associated with the app. These plans are designed to help the user read more of the Bible and understand and analyse the contents; many are free but some have a cost associated. The plans are designed and produced by various churches or religious organisations associated with the publisher.

Within a class or even a library, the YouVersion Bible App can be a way to easily access the contents of the Bible and what messages are contained. Rather than flicking through a paper Bible when looking for a certain verse or book, a student can use the mobile app and mark the section and revisit during study time or Religious Education classes. This can also be used ‘on the go’ which can be helpful when completing homework (particularly Religious Education) on the bus or even at home if space is sparse.

I am not a trained Religious Education teacher (I am a secondary school, Legal Studies and English trained) nor have I ever participated within a Religious Education class; however I was christened Anglican as a child and have an interest in religion now that I am in my 20’s. I have found the app really great and the plans

informative; these, in particular, can be of use for students who are new to a school that has a Christian focus or for Year Eight students who may find the app more accessible than a printed Bible. The plans also could be implemented as part of the unit or as a homework task for the subject. For those who are particularly devout Christians, the daily quote images can be great ways to share their faith amongst their classmates and teachers. The daily quotes and the accompanying images could be used by the teachers in their morning homegroup sessions or as a point of reflection during the day.

A teacher librarian could enable access by ensuring that on all school mobile devices the app is downloaded and that there is a comprehensive guide for the teachers to use, particularly if they are temporary relief teachers. Overall, the YouVersion Bible App would be a brilliant resource for a school to have.

INF533 – Assignment 2 – Review 1: Audible

I have chosen to review Audible, an audiobook service which has a wide range of texts that you can choose from. This service gives the user one free audiobook in a 30-day free trial, after that paying $16.45 per month and gaining one Audible credit each month which can then be used to purchase audiobooks. These audiobooks can be re-listened to, as much as the user desires once the purchase is made. The user can download an Audible original book for free each month without impacting on the credits accrued and the user can also purchase an audiobook using a credit card as well as purchasing more Audible credits. The user keeps the audiobook within their library, regardless of whether they continue to use the service or not. Users can return the audiobooks that they are not happy with, however, I did not look in-depth into this function of the service. Users can also review the audiobooks and in the case of the one I chose to listen to, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban written by J.K. Rowling has 4.9/5 stars with 2, 907 ratings as of 20th of August 2019. The user can also listen to the audiobooks across their mobile apps as well as through their website and the speed at which the audiobook is listened to can be changed up to 3x the normal pace.

The authors (well worn) copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in paperback form.

While listening to the audiobook, I was able to bookmark where I was on my laptop and then resume listening from that point on my Android mobile phone. While Apple does have its own book store and the ability to purchase audiobooks off that platform, it is difficult to use those Apple-purchased audiobooks on an Android mobile phone. However, Audible is a standalone app, available on iOS, Android and Windows devices and therefore makes moving between devices easy and simple.

Within the curriculum, Audible could be used as a resource for English texts or for accessing non-fiction texts for research purposes in other subject areas. During practicums, I had students studying Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in a Year Eight or Year Nine class so this text, in particular, could be chosen as a classroom text but it is also commonly found in school libraries as a popular choice for pleasure reading. I chose to look at this book in particular as I could then focus on Audible as a whole rather than doing an in-depth text analysis of an audiobook.

I found that listening to the book fairly soothing, however, it was easy for me to zone out and stop paying attention to the text. Whether that be because of my own tendency to listen to music while studying, or whether it is because I treated it as ‘background noise’ or my own knowledge of the text having read it numerous times prior; I am unsure. If students like having music or some form of ‘background noise’ while studying, audiobooks could pose a problem within a class as they may not pay proper attention to what is occurring and thus not being able to analyse the texts adequately. Going along with this, playing an audiobook aloud in class could be beneficial as the narrator could provide additional points to focus on due to tone or inflections on certain sentences or words. However, like listening to an audiobook on your own, it can be easy for students to zone out and stop paying attention to the text and this impact can be doubled when in a class with peers. Listening to an audiobook (especially one that is an original) for research can be difficult because of referencing the content in assignments. When using audiobooks for pleasure reading, it can be jarring hearing another persons interpretation of series or book specific words considering what we interpret them to be when reading from a physical book or e-book.

When looking at using audiobooks for students with learning disabilities or specific needs, they can be beneficial but as with any student, there is still a risk of how much they are absorbing from the text. Audiobooks can be beneficial for students with speaking or general literacy skills as it gives them a different resource that they can use; especially as they could potentially repeat what the narrator says. Audiobooks can also provide access to the written word that they would otherwise be excluded from.

Overall, would Audible and audiobooks be beneficial within a classroom or as a resource in a school library? Ultimately it would come back to demand within the school, if there is enough demand for it, it could become feasible within the long term. Short term though, there would be a costly monetary outlay as many schools could not justify purchasing one book a month with the Audible credits that are provided as part of the purchase. Could it be beneficial for classroom teachers to have as a resource that they could play within the class when needed and use on a ‘case-by-case’ basis? Definitely. As for me, I would use Audible within a classroom setting as needed but on a whole, I would encourage e-books or physical books in the first instance. On a personal level, I am sticking with my physical books for pleasure reading.

Early Childhood and Primary teachers are saints – here’s why.

I’m a secondary trained teacher and yet I work in a primary school OSHC. And it has convinced me that Early Childhood and Primary teachers are saints. I honestly have no idea how they do it.

In terms of the students, I find that I can be blunt with the older students where I need to be more gentle with the younger ones. And the older students tend to appreciate it, which I like.  Also, when they do something silly or out of the ordinary; keeping a poker face is so damn hard. I struggle with it constantly.

They say the most amusing things:

“Miss, why do you wear two necklaces?” – One from my partner and one from my grandparents.

“Do you have kids? Are you married?” – No and no.

“Why do you have two rings on one hand?” – One from my grandparents and one I bought for myself.

There is no way I could cope with constant questions like that. And generally they are asked one after the other, never ending!

Also, how on Earth do Early Childhood and Primary teachers deal with students when they say: “Miss, they’re not going out,” and (my personal favourite) “But Miss, I want to play with them. I don’t want to play with anyone else!” The latter is usually accompanied with tears.

Also, what about the ones who haven’t yet been toilet trained properly? Ouch.

When it comes to the planning of work, I don’t know how they do it. The planning would be insane; especially for multiple areas and if they are in areas that aren’t a strong point. There is no way I could do planning for Math and teach it. Not my strong area at all. And putting Reception to Year 2 students on a spectrum of how comptency – forget it. How you do it when they are constantly learning and changing? I have no clue.

I also feel that the offices and staff room would be a haven. And also that you would be craving intelligent conversation rather than trying to decode what students want/need.

Early Childhood and Primary Teachers, you all are saints. I take my hat off to you.

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