Day 2 - TOC time

Today my mentor teacher was away with the badminton team, so we had an OT (occasional teacher) as they are called in Ontario. I'm starting to catch on to all the terms they use here, but it is difficult because everyone just assumes I know them. LTO is something like a long-term opportunity? Basically it's someone filling in for a teacher on maternity leave or something. Anyway, I got a lot of lesson planning done today, as my classes are first and last period so I have the entire middle of the day free with an empty office.

I supervised two students writing tests since they were absent last week. I caught one of them cheating, and I welcome any comments on my response: I saw her constantly looking at something in her pencil case, but I could not tell what it was, so I moved and sat behind the students instead. This put a stop to her looking at what I could then see were some cue cards sticking out. So she only ended up cheating on the first page of the four-page test. I did not say anything as I did not want to bring up the issue in front of the other student, nor did I want to cause issues with the cheating student on my second day here. Instead, I informed my mentor teacher when I saw him at the end of the day and he said he would take it into account when marking the test and would call her parents (especially since they did not show up to parent-teacher night last week and she often causes trouble in class). I was not sure about whether I should assert my authority... either way, I did put an end to it at least for this test. What would you have done?

I got a nice preview of the life of a TOC. She recognized some of the students from previous visits, but for the most part they were new to her. She did a good job of relaying the information my mentor teacher asked her to give to the students and assigned seat work while showing the movie. The last period class did everything she asked, while the first period class did no work and payed no attention whatsoever to the movie. In fact, they talked very loudly about some article in a magazine that discussed different types of bikini waxing. She gave up trying to regain control of the class, which is understandable considering she is only there for one day, but now the students in that class are behind the others. It will be interesting to see how my mentor teacher (we will call him S from now on to avoid typing that out every time) deals with things tomorrow! What would your approach be as a TOC?

I managed to divide all the material I have been asked to teach across the five weeks. I now have a rough daily plan for what material I will be covering, and even some activity ideas for some of the days. I showed S and he was impressed with how much I had done! I also got to meet with my supervisor today. He said I was doing well so far and that I can learn a lot from S: he doesn't let anything get him down, he believes in his students, and he doesn't let them walk all over him. I am looking forward to tomorrow already!