Practicum.

This post aims to serve as a reminder when I am jaded and burned out that I was good at what I am doing and hope this would reignite the passion.

What is practicum?

Practicum is very similar to playing Dota/LoL. You dedicate 10 weeks of your life to just playing normal/ranked games.

Normal games are the classes that are NOT observed / informally observed.
Ranked  games are the 8 compulsory lessons observations by your CT/NIES/SCM
Promotion series are the moderation observations in the event you are close to either
1) Failing your practicum
2) getting a Distinction for your practicum

How to get a Distinction for practicum?

Similar to Dota/LoL, this is a team game. You are only as good as the lousiest person on your team. Your skills can only carry so much, the rest is up to your EQ.

How many times have you lost a ranked game before the game even started? Trolls in champ select, flaming, picking 5 lategamers with no CC etc. It is EXACTLY the same in teaching.

You can be a superstar teacher with excellent pedagogy and classroom management, all it takes is one troll in your class to act up during a formal lesson observation and there goes your Distinction.

You are 50/0/50, ganking all 3 lanes, taking objectives, snowballing the game, leading your team in a final ALL MID push to victory. Out of nowhere, your Drow/AD Carry blinks/flashes into 5 enemies and get ass raped. You lose 4 v 5 and lose the game.

"If you cannot carry 4 retards against 5 retards, consider the fact that you are just as retarded as them." - Albert Einstein

Classroom management

The beauty of practicum is you have a fixed team every day. So find out who are the trolls in your team. Find out who are the special needs children from your classes, take time out to deal with them, explore classroom management strategies that appeal and works for them. Get them to be cooperative and make them work for you.

For the potential teachers out there: be encouraging, positive reinforcement REALLY works to a certain degree. Praise your special needs children. Take the small insignificant things they do and praise the crap out of them from the perspective of VALUES.

For example,
1) When they are spacing out, praise them! Tell the class to look at how well xxx is paying attention, how nice it is of xxx to be focused and not disturbing his classmates. "Class, don't you think xxx is behaving very well? I want all of you to follow his excellent example bla bla bla"

2) When they randomly say thank you to you or their class mates. Praise them! "I think this is such a gracious and well-mannered class and xxx set a very good example of being polite and respectful!" 

3) Adversely, if you HAVE to scold, make sure you remind them that you have praised them before when they did well. Get the class to re-affirm if you want so that your class and the special needs children understand that you are a firm and fair teacher that is 赏罚分明. Scolding can also sound positive. "XXX, I have seen you behave well. Class, did I praise XXX last week for blablabla? XXX, did I praise you last week for blablabla? I know you can behave better than this. Show me how you set a good example for your classmates."

So you get the point. It is just like saying "n1" or "gj" or "thanks" to your team mates who gank ur lane. 小孩子 end of the day 还是要靠哄靠骗, especially children with special needs.

Start and end your lessons on a positive note, either by praising/encouraging them for a good lesson or give them points for walking in 2 rows properly etc.

Just like how Singapore dedicates majority of their education resources into ITE infrastructure, teachers should spend the most time on lower ability students and special needs students. High/mid ability children have better family support system, they can function perfectly fine without you. Low ability children are the ones that need your help. Build rapport with the class, build trust with your LA students and get them used to your classroom management so that when lesson obs come, you will look like you are familiar with this scenario and you will look like you know what you are doing.

Pedagogy

Just like Dota/LoL, you do not straight away go into your ranked games immediately, u will always warm up your fingers and grind certain champion mechanics in normal games first before trying it out in ranked. Try out your strategies in normal games first, find out what worked/did not work and why.

Similarly, do not be afraid to try things out in regular lessons. Always always try out your formal lesson ob plans with other classes first before executing it in your formal obs. In fact, if you can try out your formal obs lesson plan on the exact class one week before, just do it and make the formal obs lesson an extension.

For example,

Week 7 is moderation observation for Class X. They will let you know one week in advance if you are lucky your moderator is not an asshole. Else maybe you will know 1-3 days in advance trololol.

If you have 1 week to prepare, more or less confirm Distinction already since you get to run through your lesson plan with Class X during Week 6. So during your actual moderation observation in Wk 7, Class X will be familiar with what you are doing and you can play on their prior knowledge to achieve an extension of the Learning Objectives from Week 6.

If you have 3 days to prepare, just try whatever you wanna try with Class Y or Z and reflect and rehearse for Class X.

EQ

The word reflect should CONSTANTLY be on your lips and thoughts after every lesson. Write down what you did and how it can be done better. Be pro-active in seeking feedback and guidance from your CT and colleagues from N*E. Anything your CT ask you to do, just do first, question later. If you are a guy I am sure you know what I mean. If you are a girl, get a guy who gone through NS to explain. A happy CT = happy trainee.

Do not think that the whole world is out to make you fail, nobody is so free to scheme and plot against you just to make you fail. Teachers are busy enough already, be pro-active, offer to help mark/key in grades/look after CCA/relief/take minutes for meetings. (Of course only offer to help when such things are mentioned. Don't be the over achieving zealous tryhard moron. Want to por lampa also must see timing and look natural.) Every extra thing you do is an opportunity to experience. Yes it will be saikang in the future, but while you are in practicum, learn as much as you can.

I personally feel that I could have passed practicum easily even before going N*E. Simply because I have the EQ and common sense. If you are someone that worries about failing practicum even after N*E, I think you are not ready to become a teacher.

Confidence is important, the key to finding the balance and appearing confident yet humble lies in how you verbally reflect. Be able to justify your rationale for doing things and verbally reflect while evaluating the reflection in an intellectual manner with the occasional self depreciating humor. Do not understand? That is why I have a Distinction. =)