Prac Teacher’s Flu

The picture to the right is basically a pictorial timeline for my last few weeks… I started
 off prac full of energy and excitement… and then I slowly felt less energised, and needed more sleep… and the last flower was when I got that dreaded ‘Prac Teacher Flu’!

I’m sure we all know (and probably have experienced) what I’m talking about… that horrible flu that is basically a super flu… a combination of every single strain of flu that is currently going through all of the students – and other teachers.

However, as horrible as it is, I find it actually helped me gain experience for future teaching. I learnt the importance of not using my voice to convey my messages to the students – I learnt to write down an overview and lesson objective for every lesson and get the students to read it,  rather than me telling them. During my rotational group activities, I projected a giant timer on the screen so they could keep a track of the time, rather than have me try to raise my voice to give them time checks, and then at the end of that rotation, the alarm would go off and they knew they had to rotate. For my older students, in Year 11 Biology, I decided to let them teach each other. I assigned each group a Reproductive Technology (like Amniocentesis, or Chorionic Villus Sampling), and as a class they made a list of what they would have to cover in their presentations, and then they made PPTs to present to their classmates.

So yes, prac teacher’s flu is awful and debilitating, but I’ve also decided it is a necessary evil!

Image- CCO Public Domain