Teaching

Training to be a teacher is a thousand times more difficult than I had expected. Leaving school I believed teaching was a simplistic career where the teacher did little, despite what I had heard. Now that I am immersing myself in the culture of education I am grasping the holistic perspective of the tasks and wonders that come with this profession.

At university I am studying to become a primary school special educator, but on the side I am practising as a children’s swimming teacher. Foolish me thought how simple this job would be, but as the months go by I reflect upon how difficult it has been and how it gets a little easier each day.

Teaching swimming differs entirely based on the age levels I’m working with. The lowest class I work with is from 3 years old upwards which includes children who have been in a baby swimming program and children who have never swam before in their lives. In this year level, my goal is to teach my students how to be comfortable immersing their heads under water – without a ring or noodle. This past week I worked with 6 students for half an hour five days in a row, who by the end of the week were all able to achieve this task. In my role as a swimming teacher this has been one of my greatest achievements. In my ordinary school term classes lessons are weekly therefore it’s more complicated as the children have been away from the pool for 7 days. My wish and aim for these children is to have engrained the learning principles taught the week before so strongly in their minds that when they return they know where we left off.

One of my littlies this week was a young girl of the age of four or five. Two years earlier a swimming teacher at a different centre had pushed her head under the water. This had traumatised her from water; her mother could not wash her hair in the bath or shower for a year. On Tuesday this young girl came into my pool and worked with a different teacher who, to keep it brief, at the end of the class the young girl left in tears. Her mother was not impressed. A day later I worked with her myself. In the shallow water she was comfortable, yet in the deep water she refused to get in. By the end of our class on Wednesday, I had worked with her in getting back into the deep water and by Friday she was putting her whole head in the pool. Her mother had such appreciation for what I had done and how I had approached the situation with her daughter. Thinking about the happiness of her and her daughter is a true reason why I love my job. Knowing that the way I act and speak to adults and children can make a differences in their lives, and possibly save them one day in an emergency in water is what keeps me going.

The older classes that I worked with this week were developing kicking, propulsion and breath control. On Tuesday I knew that I had to pick up my game with these children; classes were slow, swimming was poor and my authority was being tested. I’ve learnt the key to fixing this is rotations; continual swimming so that students do not have the time or opportunity to mess around, they know what they’re there to do and they do it. Older kids can be tricky but if I keep a firm ground with them and let them know that I’m there to help them achieve set tasks and advance to higher levels of swimming I too can achieve great things.

Teaching takes time. This week especially I have learnt that instructions have to come in small doses. Sure, with arm circles students need to point their toes, splash their feet, keep their chins down, blow bubbles, have flat hands, splash at the back, roll their head on their shoulder and take a breath – but I simply cannot tell them to do all these things in one setting. With the time set, practising one of these tasks at a time in as many laps across the pool as possible is crucial. In my instruction, I need to keep it to telling students one thing to fix in each class until they have mastered it. If I’m focusing on a child’s breathing then I will not remind them of their kicking because they’re not thinking about their kicking, they’re thinking about breathing. When that task of breathing becomes natural then the rest will follow, as with other cues.

It’s amazing to think just a few months ago I had none of this knowledge but I’m slowly learning more and more. I am absolutely grateful for this chance to practice teaching. Among many things I have learnt time, class and behaviour management, class preparation, to communicate with other teachers, and how students learn in a real setting as opposed to my numerous textbook chapters on it in my bookshelf.

Julia

Three strikes and you’re out

So I didn’t realise I did this until I did it last night.

I was at a friend’s 21st from my new job and there was quite a few people there. Despite this my job is in the country (which I do not live any where near) so everyone basically knew everyone.

Earlier in the night I met this lovely group of girls who were absolute darlings! A few of them left for a bathroom break (because as I remind myself, girls don’t go to the loo alone) and I joined my fellow work colleagues again. We drank and danced and chatted away. After the largest 21st joined singalong of Wonderwall, we all danced to some awful 21st century music when I met this guy: Rob.

Rob is our batter today. After some small talk we sat down and further discussed some interesting viewpoints he had.

Strike one: “I hate Americans! But I’d really love to go to America!”
To which I asked why he despised over 311 million people. And he replied “because they all think they’re better than everyone else!”
Yep, because as we all know everyone who lives in the same area of land has exactly the same viewpoint, none of which can be decent. In the USA they don’t even need political parties because the only thing that’s really important is displaying general arrogance.

At this point a friend walked past and mouthed the words “Are you okay? Do you need me to save you?” and I responded that all was a-okay!

Strike 2: I asked him about his course, engineering, and the people in it. Firstly I have a bad run with people studying engineering because they always just seem to turn out to be ignorant and a tad full of themselves. But I still give them a go to try prove me wrong! Anyway, Rob says “All the guys in my course are idiots. They don’t know anything about anything and they’re so stupid!”
At this point in my mind I’m thinking ‘Okay Rob, we all know how non-judgmental you are but there’s surely no need to boast.’
I asked him if he’d ever actually spoken to any of them before, in which he replied he hadn’t. Okay.

Strike 3: While sitting there trying to convince myself that this guy could still have some decency in him, the girls I had met earlier came over to us to join the conversation because them and Rob had an apparently interesting history between him and one of the girl’s ex-boyfriends. You always learn a lot about people from the company they keep. Said conversation soon turned into a heated argument which I was sitting in the middle of; Rob arguing that this lovely girl’s ex-boyfriend is smarter than she is because he is a psychology student and can ‘read minds’. As an ex-psychology student myself nothing bugs me more than people thinking you can read minds, particularly when they try to use it as a legitimate point in an argument in an attempt to belittle someone else. This argument went on for some time when another work colleague walked past and mouthed the same words as the last friend. To this, I said “Yes!” and ran for an unneeded loo stop to get away. Safe to say they didn’t realise I had left their conversation til I had walked half way across the room.

I have to say, Rob did warn me that he was an ‘asshole’ (to use his words) earlier in the night so there’s one strike against me for being foolish.

Lesson learned: Never give anyone the benefit of the doubt when they blatantly suggest they don’t deserve it, because they’re probably right. Funnily enough I got a message this morning from a friend saying how I had given our buddy Rob a good first impression and how lovely he thought chatting with me was! Likewise, Rob, I learned a lot from it.

Karma

Karma. I almost love to hate it.

I feel like many people have this superficial relationship with ‘karma’ and no one really understands the meaning of this so-called ‘belief’.

Karma is essentially a comfort blanket of whimsical thought that lies on the basis that “nothing bad will ever happen to me without someone else being punished for it”. Gee, isn’t that a nice thought? A world where you’re consolidated by the knowledge that the person who hurt you (or your loved one) will pay for what they did. Honestly, if you all believed in karma that much we wouldn’t even need policemen or soldiers because the baddies will get what’s coming for them; just let them go! The universe will get them!

In my eyes, karma is just not how the world works. Shit happens and that’s that. Sure, some things are coincidental* like “I ate seven chocolate donuts for every meal for two months and somehow I gained weight, that’s karma!” but otherwise it’s crap to me. I understand that if tomorrow I shot an innocent cat sitting on a fence eating lasagne that I would probably spend the rest of my life feeling horribly guilty and sending it’s owners flowers and little jars of my tears every Monday morning. But guilt is not karma, karma is “your husband divorced you and it’s probably because of that cat you shot twenty-five years ago”. The intensity of the bad actions you send equates to the intensity of the bad actions you receive. Wonderful.

If we were all the nicest people and never hurt one another, shit would still happen because that’s just what god damn happens. Mother nature has a mind of her own and I’m just not sure how much rain dancing is enough. Someone can hurt you and have the best fucking life you’ve ever known. Even if something bad did happen to them, are you going to stand there and be like “I TOLD YOU SO, THAT’S KARMA BEEYOTCH. YOU SIT IN THAT GRAVE AND YOU THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU’VE DONE.”

In no way can we stop bad things from happening. They just happen! Unless you’re particularly fond of body guards or being wrapped up in cotton wool or just not enjoying life to it’s fullest then good for you. Nothing bad will ever happen to you and no one will ever not pay for it. F- for having a life.

Point 2, which I believe is my most serious point, is about mental illnesses, injuries, cancer, rape, and the like. Are you really going to tell me that an 8 year old boy or girl with Leukemia is dying in hospital because he or she deserves it? No? Then you don’t believe in karma and nor should you. What comes around doesn’t go around, what comes around comes around and it’ll probably hit you in the face and that’s no one’s fault, it’s just life.

*Not coincidental, that’s just what happens.

Disclaimer: no cats were injured in the making of this blog.

Demotivational post of the day

I thought I was doing something good with my life but now I don’t know any more. I feel like I’m on a steady journey but I don’t feel like I’m living. Even in the most inspirational career path I still feel like there’s something missing. A part of me believes that travel will fix this, but I have travelled through Europe and Asia and I have come home revived with a new appreciation for life – but it is never permanent. I almost feel a detachment from who I thought I was going to become and how I really am.

Moaning to my dear mother, I proclaimed, “Everything is boring! Everyone is boring!”. Her response being, “You need love in your life”.

Kind and true words but I have searched for love and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t continue to look for it. But I feel like it’s all wasted energy for my progress in ‘love’ is the same today as it was a year ago.

People seldom capture my attention any more. I find them stock-standard and mundane. Not only that, but somehow I have developed into this unique person (certainly not a bad thing) but simultaneously this unique person is so different that she has trouble developing close relationships with people.

Perhaps it’s through all the changes that come with growing up, graduating and all that, the heartbreaks and the losses. Sometimes I feel as if I lost more from the friendships that ceased than I learnt from them. I lost the ability to easily bring people close to my heart. Sometimes I can feel that part of me that can warm to people so naturally come back, and when she returns it is bliss – I feel bliss. But she never stays for long. She goes and I find myself stuck in friendships that I fear and curse to let close to my heart.

I am no longer the girl I used to be, moving into my 20s next year it’ll be a new beginning but it frightens me where I’m  heading to. I used to be so sure of myself but as each day goes by I feel an ounce of confidence slither away from me into a locked jar named ‘the past’.

I speak of the past in such minuscule terms because for each person we really can go through life without making any noticeable dent in this universe. Of course there’s all our carbon emissions and the technical side to it, but what about when every person we have ever met has died? Every thing we created has been destroyed? Then what was it all for? 

Sure, the history books will tell of our ‘great’ leaders. Those who were loved and those who were feared, but are those stories written of those people truth? Is anything written in history how it really was? I could write of people I’ve known and events that have occurred, but it would be nothing but my perspective on such things. There is no universal monitor of the truth, a corrector, a peacekeeper or a resolver. We often foolishly believe what we hear or read as if honesty is a universal language. I am almost here to believe that the honest truth of any story is more fictitious than the story itself. That is, the bias smothered over each scenario is so thick that the scenario itself is in clear view to no one who sees it. 

Simultaneously, it’s not common knowledge but necessarily should be that society is a man-made creation. Every thing that we believe exists because of judgement, praise, jealousy, desire, and the list goes on. I think the reason why many humans have problems accepting other cultures is because they have been constructed differently from that of their own. The social norms are different because the priorities and ideologies of those regions viewed certain concepts as more important than others. That is how we grow as people and as nations. It may not be positive growth or well-meaning, but once it’s infectiousness hits it will take generations and generations to repair.