Weekly reflection (November 15th to November 19th)

This week felt like it just completely evaporated. There was so much going on in terms of

marking and other practicum related duties that I blinked on Monday and then it was suddenly

Friday. Its crazy to think that there is only 18(!) teaching days left in the practicum. Looking

back at the start of the semester, I realize how much I have grown not only as a teacher, but as a

person as well. I also realize that there is still so much to learn about teaching and this learning

really is life long – if I ever think that I know enough or that I know it all, its probably time to

call it quits. I have also realized how grateful I am for all of the people that I have met and

developed professional relationships with over the course of the practicum. Phil has been the

perfect TM for me, but I have grown more comfortable asking other teachers for advice about

particular situations that Phil doesn’t necessarily have personal experience with. One such case

was an incident that occurred last week where a students unit exam had been lost. I spoke with

Phil about how to handle the situation and he gave me some solid options of how to deal with it.

But in this case, Phil had never lost a student’s test, so relaying this information to the student

was not something that Phil ever had to do before. I spoke with one of my other colleagues about

the situation and he gave me some fantastic tips about how to approach it. In the case of my

student, I tried to tailor my delivery of the news in a particular way since he is on the spectrum

and has had issues with admin in the past. In this case, I wanted to give the student fair options

and then give him a choice. He could either rewrite a different version of the unit exam on his

schedule or he could use the replacement final at the end of the semester as his mark for this unit

test. Understandably not wanting to have to write the exam again, he chose the latter.