I met the challenge of teaching Pathways, the homeroom subject, with a wonderful practical community project that appealed to even the most difficult students, who showed what they could do and had every reason to be proud of themselves at the end of the year. Last year, our Year 8 students raised $900 between them for Save The Children!
And after the feel-good ceremony we were all called into the staff room to receive our allotments for this year and I had been taken off Pathways for the convenience of the timetable and given history/ geography, a subject I'm not qualified to teach -again for the benefit of the timetable.
No more Community Project! My colleague Jasna was also taken off it and while both teachers assigned to the subject have been supportive, I doubt either of them is interested in doing this. So we'll be back to presenting one student with the Pathways award and the subject being entirely classroom-and-theory-based and no one being able to add it to the resume they have to do in Year 9 and 10. Sigh! You know, I had one extremely difficult student last year who proved to have some leadership skills and some good ideas and rated this as his favourite subject.
But I made the best of the H/G. A colleague arranged for me to see a very good junior history teacher at her old campus to get some ideas and materials. The whole thing lasted about half an hour, after which I thanked her politely, took the stuff she had given me and took public transport back to my own campus. I got hold of the then Scope and Sequence -the document that tells you what you have to get through(though not how - it assumes you know that)-and spent a chunk of my summer break trying to come up with something to start with.
I prepared something I thought might be a good start, according to the document I had, and might even be engaging. And as soon as we returned, we were handed a revised scope and sequence document and there has been another since then.
Still. I have done what I can. I took them through a bit of research skill, using the topic they're about to cover, so they would have something to start, plus showing them some primary documents(another thing we have to do), such as Ibn Fadlan's description of Vikings as filthy and John of Wallingford's description of them as disgustingly clean.
I found I also had to do mapping - what do I know about maps and mapping? I asked the campus vice- principal, who himself has to do H/G. He said, "What do I know?" and told me he had had his year 7 label and colour a world map.
I decided to do the same, except I stuck to a map of the Viking world, after a map of Scandinavia, as we're about to do the Vikings. And that told me something about the class's skills - or lack, thereof - in looking things up. I had intended to spend some time working on it with them, but when I was absent on the day I was to start, someone found my photocopied maps and handed them out to start, without discussion. So they began without me there.
Some did very well and will have their maps up immediately on the classroom wall. They got what they had to do and how to look up the countries they needed to label. Others didn't. They started the colouring in before they had done the labelling. So two or three coloured in the Mediterranean green and North Africa blue! Two put the Mediterranean in the Atlantic and one labelled the coast of North America as Algeria! I photocopied them all so I could return the originals with comments, but one student - the one who labelled Algeria in North America - refused to fix it, despite only a couple of small things needing changing. I'll keep the photocopy to show his parents if necessary, when they come for PT night, and cover the mistakes in the original with a white label, to make it easier. If he still refuses, well, all I can do is keep the mixed up one to show his Mum and Dad. His sister was in my class last year and they came for her. One boy didn't exactly do what I had asked, but worked so hard on his map that I'm putting it up anyway; he is apparently a difficult student and I want to reward his effort. He got the labels right, anyway, just didn't do it as I had asked.
Anyway, last Friday, I did an exercise using Melway's Street Directory, to give them practice in looking up; it works pretty much the same as an atlas and is clearer. I discussed it for a while, then handed them a sheet of places in their area to look up. All they had to do was look up the map numbers in the index and write it down, then mark the spots on the photocopy I'd given them. That seemed to work better than the previous mapping we'd done, in giving them an idea how to look up. The only problem is that Melway's and atlases alike go out of date. The area didn't, of course, but the edition 35 I had at home, where I prepared it, had facilities the school's edition 32 didn't, so I had to change that bit.
The atlases are another matter. The class set is so old, it still has the Soviet Union in it! The individual copies are battered and some have had pages torn out. I am going to see if a proposal for a new class set, even ten copies to start with, will get some support.
My library is gradually starting up. I am hoping to arrange manuscript reading again this year, possibly in March, according to the publicist at Allen and Unwin. The kids love doing it and I have a new member or two in the younger classes, which is good, because I'm not sure all the Year 10s from last year are interested - some of them are doing VCE Psychology, though this didn't stop my first lot. On the other hand,some kids who had drifted away are back . I have mentioned to the English co-ordinator that I'd love to do Premier's Reading Challenge, but it's a lot of work and can't be done without staff support. I've found a new children's bookshop to do displays, since the Little Bookroom emailed to say they're not doing this any more and tried to make it sound like good news! (You can now buy online - yay! Actually, we can't. I tried to explain this and that I do this for the students, who help choose new books, to no avail. Also, that I'd been a loyal customer fr many years. No use. The only visits they will make are if you're Veryrich Grammar running a book fair). Fortunately, the Sun Bookshop in Yarraville is happy to come instead, and there's always Dymock's for the specific books.
I'm discovering the students' reading levels to help them choose the right book for them, helping the literacy bunch with advice and suggestions and working out the reading less of books they buy.
Keeping busy and trying to work out how to teach a new subject!
