Entry #6: Training Week

Training started on Tuesday morning, and we were the last to arrive. We hadn’t quite figured out how to set the timer on the water heater in our “room of mystery” (our name for the room that had the underwear on the door handle), so I got a cold shower that morning. Adrian was in a suit and tie and the session was being led by a former head teacher who was now a school inspector. Extra chairs had to be found for us. Everyone had to wait as we filled out our lunch order form. It wasn’t the greatest start to the day.

There were about ten of us crammed into one of the upstairs rooms of the TimePlan office, and Dave was the only male. We started off the session predictably, with everyone introducing themselves and talking about their experiences. There were three recent graduates from Newfoundland, all friends, and all with varying degrees of accents; two English-speakers from Montreal, also friends; one Aussie who had been teaching in North Carolina; and one girl from just across the street in Milton, Ontario, who did her teachers college training in New Zealand. To our good fortune, someone else arrived quite late, well after we were finished introductions, and on a brief glance I noticed that it was a man and was happy that Dave could have a friend. On closer inspection, however, it turned out that he had at least fifteen years on the rest of us and talked in a way that reminds you of David Blaine if David Blaine were ever be nervous and if David Blaine talked so much. He happened to also be from the Toronto area (check in the positive column) but was unfortunately wearing a royal blue Duke t-shirt (check in the negative column). He had also taught in North Carolina, and crazily enough, it turns out that he was a teacher at my brother’s junior high school while he was a student there. It was like we were back in Canada, almost.

Training started with a video of a news report about Birmingham schools that also happened to feature two teachers from overseas, recruited by Adrian and his entourage. Both were depicted as saviours from abroad, who were brave enough to leave their native lands to teach the naughtiest children in the entire world – British schoolchildren.

I was thoroughly interested to get my first glimpse of a British classroom and the notorious students of whom I have heard so much about. When we met people on the streets who asked why we were in Britain, we watched as their eyes grew wide and they recoiled slightly as we explained that we were going to be teachers. Such was the response from everyone we talked to. Apparently British schoolchildren were the worst. We heard many tell us to go back now, or laugh and think to themselves what poor suckers we were and wish us luck.

Both of the individuals in the video had been sent to what were labeled some of the worst schools in Birmingham. The camera turned to show a large classroom with the blonde teacher from Vancouver starting her lesson as the children quietly sat at their desks. Then, to all horrors, she noticed that one of the boys had neglected to remove his jacket after recess. We all sat in baited anticipation to see how she would react to such behavior. She calmly asked the student why he still had his jacket on. He shrugged his shoulders. When asked to remove the jacket, he quietly did so without so much as batting an eyelid. How horrendous.

Likewise, the other teacher from Jamaica was facing similar misconduct in his classroom of seven year olds. They showed how he managed to deal with a child who needed to take a timeout from recess activities. We all could not believe that the child would be showing any kind of reluctance or unwillingness to leave the playground and his friends to sit by himself at the wall. Frankly, we were all quite appalled by the behaviour we had just witnessed. The children were just so outrageously misbehaved and completely unlike any student we had ever had to deal with. No wonder they have such a bad rap.

So, in short, the video gave me no idea why schoolchildren have such a bad rap in this country if that is the worst of the worst that they have to offer. Perhaps I’ll be eating my own words in a couple of weeks when I actually get to experience it firsthand, but that is yet to be seen.

Training went on for the remainder of the week from 9:00am – 4:00pm, although they joked on the first day that it would end at 9:00pm every day. To this comment, Dave and I didn’t even flinch, remembering the last training session we did for camp at Brock, which was actually from 9:00am – 10:00pm every day. Training basically served to remind Dave and me that oh right, we’re teachers. Actually, it was really informative and useful, and I'm really glad it was provided for us. But my first impressions on day one, after the confusing news report, was a deep, sinking feeling in my stomach, followed by panic, and then an overriding sense that I didn’t actually want to be a teacher at all. I get the feeling from time to time, and I wonder if it’s just nerves or a lack of confidence. I wonder if perhaps everyone goes through feelings like this, especially if they’ve chosen to do something important and challenging, which is how teaching feels to me. I almost wanted to quit teachers college because of feeling this way, but I didn’t, and I found that I liked teaching once I got into it, that I liked meeting all the students, and that I especially liked teaching Phys. Ed. Gradually the feeling started to fade as the week went on and we learned all about the British school system.

Good and bad, there are many things that are different about schools here than back home. There are actually many things that I’ve decided I prefer over here. For instance, there is structure implemented on a national and per school basis, leaving teachers with guidelines to follow in subject areas instead of just leaving them to their own devices as they do in Ontario. One of the worst things about teaching back home was that although there is a curriculum and specific things that need to be taught, they can be taught in any shape or form that the teacher decides. This was really stressful as a new teacher. Sure it might allow you to be creative, but I drove myself into the ground trying to get lessons done during my practicums. Here, there just seem to be so many more resources and guidelines for how to structure a lesson in a specific subject, that it all just seems so much easier. There are also regular inspections of schools and teachers, which keeps everyone accountable. They don’t have that in Ontario…so, many teachers get away with doing very little and being quite horrible teachers to be honest. It was also fun to notice the things that Ontario has borrowed from the UK, such as the controversial IEP (Individual Education Plan) and the colours used in the curriculum to label each subject (yellow is always for literacy and blue is always for numeracy, that’s just how it is).

There was a special guest speaker who was the head teacher at a school that had failed. Here in England, schools can fail. They are called “special measures schools” and they are schools that have been inspected (every school is inspected once every three years and a report is published and made available to the public) and do not meet requirements in several areas. The idea of working in one fascinated me, because as bad as it might sound, these are the schools that know they need to get their act together, have fired all their rubbish teachers, who have most likely hired a new and inspiring head teacher to get them back on track, and who have the government support to be able to do so. The guest speaker said that the greatest thing was that it is so easy to be able to see progress, because when you’re at the bottom, the only way to go is up. I think it would be great.

By Friday, the session just seemed to drag on and on, although it was momentarily enlivened by a restrained and polite argument between “Mr. Blaine” and the school inspector, mainly on the subject of Blaine’s teaching ability, which was both entertaining and completely awkward for the rest of us. Training was starting to remind me a bit of teachers college, which was a bad sign, so luckily it was the last day. TimePlan’s high school teachers also had a training session that day and so we got to meet some more people, and I am happy to note that among them was a boy – a friend for Dave! – from Oz, who even looked a bit like Dave and had piercings too! Things are looking up!