Wednesday August 15^th 2012

Day Twenty Eight at Mountain Creek State High School

Well it is about time I have a bad day. Nearly one month of teaching and I finally got to experience some bad emotions. I don’t know if I was just tired, my lessons weren’t planned well enough, or the students were just not feeling it, but man I struggled. Session one I team teach with Melissa for a large social dance class. I had the students get ready to review from last class in order to perform a dance for the warm up. Basically I just forgot the moves while I was up there trying to review with the class. I had called out and directed them wrong 2 different times where they had to correct me. I missed a step here and a step there, just making me look dumb up in front of the class. It was defiantly embarrassing and I just really was not happy with myself. Session 2 then came along and I was collecting all my equipment to bring down to the oval. This is my year 12 REC class where we combine with another year 12 REC. I had a lot of equipment for lacrosse and I had asked some boys to help carry it all down. By the time I got down to our spot on the oval I noticed the bucket of sticks was twenty feet away, flopped over with all the sticks on the ground. The equipment bag was also not at our spot. I was confused why these year 12 students could not simply follow the instructions in a mature way. I had to make the boys go back and pick them all up and bring it down. Most of these students have never played lacrosse so I went through some basic skills and rules. Basically they acted as young kids once they had their equipment. I assumed they would be mature enough to handle the sticks and balls spread out on the oval during drills, but they just proved me wrong. They were not staying in the lines, balls were flying everywhere, and the basics of the drills were not getting across. I felt like my class was running wild and I had NO idea how to manage them. I kept blowing my whistle and bringing them in for instructions, it just felt very difficult to manage. By the end of the lesson most of the students had no idea on the basic skills for game play. I had higher hopes for the students’ skill wise but we just did not make it there today. The worst part of the lesson was after. I went to collect my bag and put my binder back in only to find a handful of kangaroo poop in the bottom all over my things. Yes kangaroo poop. This may sound funny to those reading, but let me tell you I freaked out. I am amazed with how I held it together in front of the students. I told my teacher right away, emptied the bag, and we called the students in. My teacher basically told the students how disrespectful they were all class and explained the incident that happened. She warned them that if they knew who had done this or saw anything to let us know. I basically stood there in silence, still in shock that had just happened to me. It was a good thing it was morning tea after because I went straight to the bathroom to let a couple tears out. Yes I cried. This is the first real terrible experience I have encountered and it was bad enough to shed tears. I truly just still cannot get over the fact that someone was gross enough to put poop in my bag. I really hope that the students will not continue to be disrespectful, but I am a bit nervous to teach them again next week. Deep down, it made me really upset that these students could have possibly disliked me enough to do such a thing. But I am trying my hardest to believe it was not personal and maybe just a dumb teenage joke. It was reassuring to hear my teacher explain to me how she truly felt none of the students could have done this to me purposely. She mentioned a lot of times students will play jokes on another especially to their unattended bags. It made me feel better knowing she believed I have made great connections with the students and that it is hard to believe one of them would do this to me. I really think that she may be right, and that whoever did this was unaware of who's bag it was. Well at least that is what I am going to believe :)