INTRODUCTION

After my five visits to a primary school I have analyzed and evaluated my experience through
the available literature in my college library, I can identify improvements that I would make
in future lessons and I have somewhat experienced The Joys of Teaching

In this refection I will look at how my experiences in the school made me feel, how I feel
now, what I would do differently and how the experience has changed me, while referring
back to the topic of the joys of teaching.

THE JOYS OF TEACHING

Something I seen a lot of in my placement was the teacher telling

the children to do something and then having to repeat herself four or five
times which even for me was very frustrating. Looking back on it I feel
the same but I have to allow for the children being under the age of 13
which means they are still very immature and have not been introduced
to the strict secondary school regime, pupil behavior should not be
underestimated, in reality the challenges are subtler and wide-ranging
than managing the behavior of wayward adolescence! (Val Brooks, 2004,
p. 7). If it was me in control of the class I would make sure I implement a
rule that when I raise my hand the class stops and waits for me to give an
order, as I feel this would get the children challenging each other to see
who will be the first and last to stop and look up. If this worked it would be
such a relief in a class of twenty-five students and would make them a joy
to teach compared to chaos.

I was put in an awkward situation when the students got used to me

and asked me how old I am and other personal info, as I felt if I told them I
was eighteen they might have brothers or sister that age or older and this
would make me seem more like a friend or less mature. Because of this I
feel like I acted quite awkward and just said that is very personal to ask a
teacher and carried on with what I was doing. I feel I handled this well, as
at the time I did not know if it was ok to tell the children that information
in that school. When I was in school we would not ask any questions like
this. I appreciate that this exposure has made me more confident in these
types of situations.

Oh the joys, probably the most irritating thing about dealing with
children is when they start making silly noises for no reason, indiscipline
in schools has become a significant difficulty for the entire teaching
profession (Dolan, 2009, p. 94). In my placement I seen this a lot as the
children were all under thirteen. In one scenario the teacher asked the
class something and one student replied with yes, yes, yes in a high
pitched voice which not only irritated me but was in trouble with the
teacher. Initially I was questioning how I will deal with this in my own
class, but looking back on it I feel like I would do a very similar thing to the
teacher in charge only I might punish them with extra homework or a
note. I may have been taken back at first but I feel like I would have dealt
with this situation as I would now.

In the last three observations I has only discussed the down falls of
teaching and was very sarcastic of the title but there are good sides to
teaching. One student was obviously stuck as to what he was doing wrong
in his math as asked the teacher to come and help, quickly another
student stood up and helped him and he did not only go over to mess or
just tell him the answer. The student really showed that he was Trying to
build up cooperative and social skills (Polland, 2008, p. 7) in ways most
young teachers struggle . I was really amazed at this and still am, for a
thirteen-year-old to handle the situation so well allowing the teacher to
help another student was great to watch. Since this I think maybe we
should start getting the students to teach each other in some way from a
younger age.
CONCLUSION

To conclude my first year school placement I really wish we could have

gone to schools more and had a more hands on experience rather than
just correcting copies and observing as I feel this would be extremely
helpful with confidence in presentations and microteaching.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dolan, B. W. (2009). A guide to Teaching Practice in Ireland. Dublin: Gill &
Macmillan Ltd.

Polland, A. (2008). Reflective Teaching (Vol. 3rd). China: Continuumbooks.

Val Brooks, I. A. (2004). Preparing to Teach in Secondary Schools. Glasgow: Open

University Press.