Mr. Wichman in Action!

First, news about Mr. Wichman senior, i.e. my dad: he’s doing great!

This morning Dad finally underwent the bypass surgery to address the problems that led to his heart attack earlier this year. We were expecting a quadruple bypass, but the surgeon super-sized it up to a sextuple! No doubt the passages of his heart now resemble the intersections of the 400-series highways (but hopefully are more effective at relieving congestion). Despite the procedure being more extensive than we expected, my sister reports that Dad is recovering well in the ICU. Leighann flew in from Halifax to keep Mom company, a trip that is becoming a regular autumnal pilgrimage to help ailing Wichman men. Last year she made the same voyage to support me during my cancer treatment. I’d give her a Florence Nightingale award, but she’s not big on ceremonies, so instead I’ll just give her a hug when I see her.

This leads me to news about Mr. Wichman junior, i.e. me: I wasn’t able to be at the hospital in Kitchener today because I was teaching my second (ever!) lesson in a classroom here in Toronto. Yes, I’ve now been a student teacher in the grade 3 classroom in Cabbagetown for four weeks (has it really been that long already?). I’m in the classroom in the morning from Monday to Thursday and I’m having a ball!

The class consists of 22 children from Regent Park (a community housing neighbourhood just south of the school). Most of the kids’ parents are recent immigrants to Canada. Given my notoriously bad memory, I had concerns about remembering some of the unfamiliar names, but each child’s personality shines through so clearly, it wasn’t a challenge at all to remember everyone’s name. My favourite moment so far is when I was standing next to one girl’s desk. She looked up at me and said, “You’re really tall.” I agreed with her. She thought for a moment and then concluded, “You must have eaten a lot of bananas.”

Mostly I’ve been observing as my host teacher runs the show and she has proven herself to be an exemplary model. A graduate of the same Master program I’m pursuing, she has now been teaching for several years and she runs a tight ship. She clearly lays out for the students her expectations, her rules, and the consequences for breaking the rules, and she applies them consistently but not harshly. Rather than bend the kids to her will, she’s more interested in encouraging the students to take responsibility for their behavior. For example, rather than ordering chatty students not to sit together during story time, she’ll suggest that students “think about their choices” of where and how to sit. All of this was great for me to witness considering that group discipline is an area in which I have the least experience; most of my work with kids has been individually or in pairs.

Indeed, I’m quickly learning how tricky it can be to balance the needs of 22 children instead of one or two. For example, at the end of one class in the computer lab, a student was unable to print her work due to a faulty network connection. Passing in the work was her ticket out the door for recess. Even though she was printing late due to wasting time in class, I didn’t want to see her punished for a technical malfunction. So, I promised her I’d print it for her at the beginning of recess. Well, after 10 minutes of running around the school trying to find a free and working printer, I had to admit defeat and return to the class empty-handed. I’m still struggling with having to admit that ten minutes spent on one student’s technical difficulties is not realistic, no matter how just I feel her cause. I’ve since been paying closer attention to the quick decisions my host teacher makes on the fly – always being sure to lay out her reasoning to the students – so as not to lose too much time. Like every job, teaching requires a thousand little skills that you don’t think about until you are in the thick of things yourself.

Okay, so I’ve focused on behavior and time management so far, but only because that’s where I’m looking to most improve. I should emphasize that in general, this class is a very well-behaved group. The typical misbehavior I’ve witnessed simply stems from the ants-in-your plants nature of being 8 years old. Fortunately, my host teacher also has a knack for harnessing that energy and keeping the students engaged. Currently she’s teaching a Language Arts unit on personal narrative writing and featuring the picture books of Patricia Polacco, one of my favourite author/illustrators. Meanwhile, each student has been given a mini-book of stapled papers the size of a passport. Like a passport, they are to fill out each page with the name of a book they’ve “visited” by their favourite author. They are also to write something notable about how the book was written that they can use in their own writing. Though the narrative unit will come to an end in a few weeks, the class will continue to use these passports all year long. How great is that?

As I mentioned at the top, I too have had a chance to teach two lessons myself. The first lesson was two weeks ago. I made an interactive self-introductory presentation (not unlike the one I did by the dozens in Japan) that segued into a lesson about personal narrative using a writing frame (boxes identifying the main plot points). I told the story about how, one morning on my way to school in Japan, I rescued a dog that had fallen from the bed of a pickup truck. The students seemed captivated and had no trouble recalling the plot points of my tale to fill up the chart.

The second lesson, just this morning, was longer, but involved fewer students. Because today is Eid, the celebration that concludes the fasting month of Ramadan, more than half the class was absent. The remaining nine students and I again used writing frames, but this time as a tool for taking notes from the Social Studies textbook, specifically food and transportation of the Wendat people, early native inhabitants of Upper Canada. This topic was an interesting tie-in for me to A Native American Thought of It, one my final editorial projects before my departure from Annick.

As I stood there this morning encouraging the students to share what they’d learned from their readings, I felt like I was home. I know I have much to learn about being an effective teacher, but I feel like I’ve completed a circuit that started with me working in a bookstore, continued with me working in publishing, and now has me in front of a group of young people engaging in books. It is an electrifying feeling.

Good thing too - I need that power to keep me energized through the heavy coursework and readings that are keeping me busy the rest of the time. I’m enjoying that aspect of school too but realizing that my I Love Lucy analogy for publishing applies just as much for grad studies. (Actually, I’m starting to suspect that the only occupation for which that analogy doesn’t apply is working on an actual chocolate assembly line!)

My next practicum placement begins in three weeks and will likely be in a kindergarten. Stay tuned!