Pros and Cons of Teaching at an All Boys School

Pros
- There is no bitchiness
- You don't have to witness painful teenage flirting/giggling/slapping etc.
- Students are unlikely to notice, and comment upon, you wearing the same shoes/top/hairstyle three days in a row.

Cons
- Teenage boys are champions of the silent and violent farts (and then looking innocent).
- All the popular history subjects seem to be related to war/military history.
- ....I actually can't think of any more cons.

So I start the second part of my teaching placement tomorrow. I am terrified for four main reasons:

1. It's a private school which is something I have never experienced before.
2. It's all boys. ALL BOYS. Only boys. Lots of boys. Teenage boys everywhere. Scary!
3. I'll be teaching history for the first time. I haven't been in a High School history class for eight years and my uni course gave me about 2 hours of instruction on teaching history this semester - thanks shitty uni course.
4. The classes I'll be teaching will be mainly on modern history which I know close to nothing about.

You know what, I am actually quite excited about teaching content I have learnt the night before to classes of rowdy, wealthy(spoilt?), fifteen year old boys. Seriously. I'm not even being sarcastic.

So tomorrow I will put on my PABSTOY (Private All Boys School Teacher Outfit Yo) and I will walk in there and hide my terror like a boss. As one of my wise course tutors told me: fake it til you make it.

Photo: Tim Barnes

18 year old boy says...

* At work*

Him: My friend made out with a whale last night!

Me: WHALE? Is that some new acronym the youth are using these days or are you just telling me he kissed a fat girl?

Him: Yeah, a fat chick.

Me: .......

Him: So later I went up to him and was like  ' dude, I didn't know you liked sea creatures'. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha


Me:
ha ...harr...

The bitch is back

So I had a fling with another blog (tumblr) and have returned to Anthology begging to be taken back. We just have so much more history and textual integrity.

Today is a lazy Sunday. I also had a lazy Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. I should be on teaching placement right now but my university couldn't find a school/mentor teacher for my History specialism, so I will have to do my placement during exam period. My first three weeks of placement were wonderful and reinforced my desire to become a teacher.

Here is a blog post from my first week at the Language school:

Day three
I have started placement and it rocks! Just as I thought it would. It’s wonderful to be out of those dry uni classes. I have been lucky enough to be placed with a wonderful mentor teacher and the department I’m working in seems to be fairly good in general. The school is in quite a rough area but my department teaches less than fifty students over three levels, and they are all lovely so far.

This is such a change of mood for this blog. Which has pretty much just been me bitching since the beginning of the month. I am still extremely unimpressed with the uni side of things. A couple of classes have picked up a bit since the first two weeks, but the general running of the course leaves a lot to be desired. I almost feel as if there is no point in making any complaints, or pointing out the many issues or injustices of the course since I’m only doing a one year diploma and it would probably hinder rather than help my results to make a fuss.

Anyhow, back to placement. It’s the third day and I haven’t taught on my own yet which is a bit of a letdown - I’m ready to get up there. I’ve observed lots of lessons, done some team teaching with my mentor, been on an excursion, and sat in on some parent/teacher interviews. I’ll start teaching my own classes when the next term begins after Easter. I already feel attached to the wonderful students I’ve been in class with for the past three days, I’ll probably be one of those teachers who cry at the end of the year.

I have worn my three favourite ‘teacher’ outfits. Time to start mixing and matching.