Professional Experience 1

Homebush West Public School, 2013. 

Although it has already been four weeks since placements finished, I still feel that I should leave a note of memory in regards to my first professional experience. I was placed at Homebush West Public School in a Stage 3 classroom. 

First of all, when the time came to select schools and stages/years of preference for professional experience, I couldn't decide which school to select, so I did some 'research'. I looked up each of the schools on the list to read their website information, school newsletters and annual reports. As I have experience with ESL students, I was eager to go to a school with a high ESL population in which I could start to develop my own 'unique style' of pedagogy that was constantly emphasised in theory and especially to take my ESL teaching experience further. With this research done, I clicked on five different schools in which I was eager to start my placement at. Five different schools all in Early Stage 1/Stage 1 classrooms. Only to receive my 'Professional Experience Package" and email allocating me to a school, which first of all was not even on the list of schools given to us for selection but in a STAGE 3.... YEAR5/6 CLASSROOM. Despite the fact that I have been teaching mathematics and English to Stage 3 students for the past five years, I was devastated. I felt that a full class of "soon-to-be-high-schoolers" would be very intimidating and imagined them to be big and tall and disinterested... But, no. Not at all. They were not as big and scary as I had anticipated and I must say, I had an unforgettable professional experience and the most sad, last day of school. 

HWPS divide their classrooms by Stage and not by Year so when I was allocated to a Stage 3 classroom, the children were a mixed bunch of students from Year 5 and Year 6. During my pre-prac visit, I learnt that this school had a bit of a 'high school system' with their Stage 3s, in that they had a home class for a variety of subjects but for English and Mathematics, they split the students by Year and by Level. So, in the long-run I got to know and teach more than one class of students than most of my university peers on placement would have been teaching. I loved teaching the students in my classes, I loved learning from my cooperating teacher and being part of the "community and family" that HWPS emphasised with their students. The children were very responsive and incredibly engaged. They always wanted to participate and the "Who can tell me ....?" questions soon changed to "_____, can you tell me...." as whenever I spoked the word 'WHO', the whole class would throw their hands in the air wanting to contribute to the lesson. I was lucky to have a great supervising teacher, friendly staff and even more lucky that the children were so responsive and interested in everything I wanted to teach. There wasn't a single day I woke up wishing I didn't have to go to school even if the weather was way above thirty degrees or pouring rain. I learnt so much from this experience. Not only did I get  flexible chances to try out different lessons, I learnt about the in-and-out of school responsibilities of being a teacher. 

On the last day, my co-teachers started making bets on what time I would start crying... HAHA. I can't remember who won, but I started bawling my eyes out and it wasn't even 12pm. My students, although they were the 'cool' Stage 3s, the leaders of the school burst into tears at random times of the morning. How could I keep my tears in with these children sobbing away? Yes. It wasn't a pretty sight and my co-teachers and my supervising teacher mocked and laughed at me the whole day. I received so many touching letters, drawings and cards from the children and when I finally came home on that last day, I sat down to read all of them and felt very unsettled and was still quite emotional haha. I think I slept at least 20 hours straight that day and woke up feeling... tired. Those weeks of experience were amazing and even though it is 3 weeks back into uni now, I still think of the staff and children and still share the funny episodes that happened during prac with my friends.