Wow. What a Feeling!!!

Anyone else feel happy, excited, exhausted, amazed, honoured, overwhelmed, surprised, exhilarated – and overall just looking forward to your next session??!

A few weeks ago was my “first day at school” at school for the season. Having been through the program last year, I was sure this was going to be a breeze… Last year I did an extracurricular program. We started with an overwhelming 26 students and 7 team across year 10, 11 and 12. The attendance soon whittled down as people got busy with other things, but we had 3 solid teams that completed and the most successful one winning a prize at the Gala Night.

This year, I am mentoring 3 classes and they are all very different…

• A class of Year 9 fledglings just waiting to get out of the nest and test their wings
• A class of Year 10 students who went through the program last year
• An extracurricular program with a mix of Year 10, 11 and 12 students

My students are a mixed bag with varying level of interest in the subject matter. After week 5, we are starting to see some great progress and working out how to work together to learn. Most of the teething challenges have been related to my shortfalls and preconceived ideas about how people learn…

The challenges I have faced:

• ensuring that those who want to learn, are empowered to do so
• understanding that my students aren’t necessarily disinterested just because they don’t always look you in the eye
• picking up when the students are just testing me or the teacher
• figuring out how to engage those who appear to be disturbing others
• being willing to change and try something different when the first attempt didn’t work

One word of advice… don’t walk into a room with preconceived conceptions and expectations like I did…. Things never turn out the way you think they will. People are different, classes are different, schools are different, the overall dynamics are different – and it is all super exciting with all the challenges and opportunities that poses.