A day in the life of an intern-teacher

Intern's log, Earth date October 13th, 2009:
I arrived on time today, but didn't do a lot before class started at about 8:35. I noticed that H and I were the only two interns around, A - the usual third intern - wasn't there. When the class was finally quiet, they were given the scheduled language test. During the explanation and Q&A I was sitting at the instruction table the entire time, watching how, but more important, what questions M - the teacher - replied to. One of the kids asked what 'dingy' (groezelig) meant in a question where they had to sort words from weak to strong. I was surprised to hear that word in a test for third grade, because honestly, I didn't know what it meant either. M however, who is a bit older and wiser, explained what it meant to the kids and with that, spoiled a bit of the answer already.

After they had completed the test, I collected them and started 'grading' them along with H. The kids started doing arithmetical calculations together with M. Once again, during the explanation I sometimes dropped my green pen used for grading and paid attention to how she helped the class with the exercises she had given them. After paying a bit of attention, I continued grading the tests and was surprised at some of the mistakes kids made! I mean, there have been made plenty of non-surprising mistakes, like wrongly-written words (missing a consonant 'aleen' or having one vowel too much 'leege'), but there were also surprising mistakes, purely made because of lacking concentration and/or attention span. Even with the explanation of the word 'dingy' (groezelig), spoiling its place in the list, some of the kids misplaced it, and put it after 'gross' (smerig), which was in fact the strongest word in the list!
Another example of stupid mistakes were the wrongly contradicted words in the 'write the contradicting word' exercise, simply because the kids didn't read the sentence properly. Instead of writing 'light jacket' (lichte jas), some kids wrote 'white jacket' (witte jas), simply because they read the word zware (heavy) wrong, and mistook it for 'zwarte' (black). It wouldn't have been a surprising mistake if they had to rush finishing the test, but they had all the time of the world!
Still though, I can't fully blame the kids for not acing the test (some kids however, did!). The formulation of some of the questions was horrid. During the grading, I was angry at the answer booklet for saying that the first part of zonneschijn (sunshine), zonne was. Now I got angry at that because if I were the one making that test, I would consider the first part of a word, the first syllable, making the answer zon. Same goes for voetbalschoen (football shoe). Apparantly the first part of that was supposed to be voetbal. Isn't voet (foot) by itself a word too, and the first syllable for that matter? Rather strange formulation if you ask me.

After the class finished the mental calculations, the kids had to complete their day tasks on their own. The teacher went to the hallway together with a couple of pupils to practice the tables (or whatever), leaving H and me with an, at first, quiet class. When I noticed the class started to lose its concentration, I started walking around to answer questions and keep the kids quiet. It mostly went fine at the beginning, but there were a couple of kids that have a hard time concentrating: F, P, S and SS. At first, I just asked them to keep quiet and to work for themselves, but when they still had bursts of non-coneentration (leading to shouting and stuff) I decided to sit next to P and S, to keep them quiet and working. On a certain point it started to work, and I made a deal with P and S that they would try their best to stay focused. I have to say it worked rather well for quite some time! Same goes for F, when I talked to him a bit and told him to work by himself, he soon was little annoyance to me and the rest of the class.
SS was a whole challenge by itself. After telling her she had to work quietly and not talk to the rest of her group, I started a conversation with her, saying things I shouldn't have as well. For instance, I told her I tried my best to keep the others quiet as well, and that I am a teacher for sake of the kids, not for my own. In her eyes I saw that she didn't liked the conversation (I honestly thought that she wanted to cry) and decided to talk even more 'recognisable'. I made her replace her table and for a moment, thought the talking worked. After four minutes or so I noticed that she had replaced her tables again and started feeling irritated myself... this waswhen the teacher walked in and started talking to the entire class.
During the conversation (which was about me and how I'm a first year student), I slowely realised I must've done something wrong for her to have that kind of a conversation:

You kids must know that Ifar is studying to become a teacher just like me, and is here to be taught by teaching. This goes well for most of the time, but sometimes it doesn't go well as well. We've had this conversation before, but I want you to always remember he's there for you.

When the conversation was over and the kids were eating, I got one of the toughest feedbacks I've had during my entire period as an intern.

The reason why some of the kids weren't listening to you that well was because your relation wasn't good enough with them. You have to work hard on creating a good relationship with the pupils. You can only demand things like silence from kids if they feel like you're their teacher and accept you as one.
I saw you had trouble keeping SS quiet. What you did wrong is to tell him you tried your best to keep the kids quiet, but that he had to be quiet for it to work as well. This is talking about how you experience things as a teacher. If you tell the kids this when you don't have a good-enough-relationship with them, they take no message of it. Especially SS is one of those kids that doesn't simply take you for granted, take no message of what you say, and as a result, does exactly the opposite of what you want him to do, simply because you and him aren't close enough. He just doesn't consider you someone to listen to. After trying once or twice to keep him quiet, you'll just have to ignore the problem, and hope for the best. You can't want what you can't accomplish.

Honestly, this struck me hard. It was a moment of pure realization, allowing me to add 1+1. It didn't only explain that incident, but the entire madness considering some of the more difficult kids to handle. What struck me even worse was the fact it wasn't completely my fault for not getting them quiet. Before that conversation, I always thought it was my way of talking to kids that was the problem and that is was simply solved by watching the teacher handle problems and copying her way. However, in the actual reason I have problems with those kids, there are factors I can't control myself like the amount of time I spend with the kids, or the way the kids are themselves. I realised it wasn't a simple change of plans that would make the kids whisper instead of talk... that it wasn't a simple change of plans that would make the kids walk in pairs and not behind me when walking towards the swimming pool... that it wasn't a simple change of plans that would shush the kids and make them pay attention while I explain them 1 on 1. There's more behind it, way more.
It really saddened me that I got to know that after commanding, just talking about what I want and why I want it doesn't work as a second option. For that to work I would have to create a relationship that wasn't possible... Yes, the feedback was fierce, and yes, it lit my mood for the rest of the day: I was broke and became powerless. After the break was over, I noticed some kids weren't really reading their books how they were supposed to do it. I walked to them and told them they had to be quiet, but when it didn't work I decided to ignore it. While walking back to my table, I quickly turned around to peek what they were doing. Apparently they thought it was funny, so I quickly decided to play along with it by taking a few steps and turn around to check up on them again, and again... I got their attention and got them quiet for awhile when I was back at my table. I helped Y with the tables and was called to accompany the kids the kids to the swimming pool. I obviously wasn't in the mood for it anymore, but I went along anyways (I mean it's my duty after all...)

During our way there, I felt it went okay. At the end one of the kids started crying because of a weird situation regarding plays... I didn't understand a lot of it, but noticed another kid did understand what she was on about. I told her to come to me whenever something bad happened again, but furthermore I just let the other kid consolate her, because quite frankly, it worked. I also got told from two kids they had pains in their leg and weren't sure whether they could swim or not. I asked if they wanted to give it a shot, and they replied with yes. I did tell them to come to me when they felt like they weren't able to swim anymore, because I didn't want them to drown. I told the teacher about them and she nodded. I assumed that was an okay and continued to walk to the dressing rooms. The kids preparing for swimming went perfectly fine! Dressing up was done quickly and in a way that didn't annoy me or anyone around the dressing rooms. Even loo visits were done according to the rules!
During the swimming, one of the kids who told me his leg hurt, came out of the water and told me he couldn't bare it anymore. I went to the teacher to discuss it, and after she looked at the place it hurt and gave an okay, went to the dressing room for him to change into his usual clothes (which I simply wouldn't have come up with if it weren't for the teacher saying to dress up - lol). After he was done dressing up we went to watch the other kids at the side of the pool and chatted quite some time... I was desperate to work on my relationships with the kid! Although it was mostly gibberish I replied with (I was all like 'oh really? Interesting...' and 'I didn't know that'), I noticed the kid had fun talking to me and went on and on about animals I didn't know about. I let him talk all he wanted until I was summoned to help the kids dressing up again for our way back to school. That too went fine.

Walking back with the kids felt weird though. They were all jumpy because they had been active during swimming, and with the fierce feedback I got back at school in the back of my head, I just didn't feel like it was worth commanding kids to walk faster, stop messing about and stop walking behind me... For instance: T and F were seriously messing around on our way back by niggerknocking, running everywhere like mad men and igniting scratch fireworks. After trying to make them stop two or three times I just gave up hope and ignored their misbehaviour, exactly like the teacher told me. In all honesty, having to ignore their misbehaviour out of powerlessness was a real difficult thing for me. I can see why teachers sometimes can't bare their job and have to quit or take a break with it.
It was after school time when I told the teacher what kind of bad things I saw the kids doing while walking back (like T picking up food that wasn't his from a stand and throwing it back, or the fact they were igniting those fireworks). She told me immediately inform her during the walk so she could talk to T about it, and that now it was too late. After some discussing about the future exercises I had to do for my college school, I went home at four o' clock, being totally exhausted a fierce day of work.

Cheers,