Site Visit

This week was my site visit from Jocie, my field director. She has to go watch every volunteer teach and speak with their principal, just to see how things are going and to help come up with ideas for improvement. I was the last volunteer for her to come visit, and was only nervous because she told me all about how amazing the other volunteers are in the classroom.
Jocie arrived Thursday afternoon and we had a good time chatting. She taught me how to make home made macaroni and cheese, which was incredible. She’s always a lot of fun to have around, and we had a good time cooking and eating.
Friday morning she came and saw part of my math class and part of my natural science class (she planned to see the whole thing but got an emergency call from another volunteer part way through and had to handle that situation). My grade 6 learners were really well behaved, so that helped a lot! We then came back to my house for break time and talked about my teaching and what my principal had to say about me. Apparently the principal is pleased with my work and happy I’m at the school (my parents would say I shouldn’t be surprised but she does seem to get annoyed with all my questions a lot). She actually made a comment about how my I am good at keeping my classes disciplined and keeping the other teachers in line. No idea what that refers to, but Jocie and I thought it was amusing.
We mostly agreed that from here on out I need to work on establishing more routines in the classroom, especially with grade 5, because I think that will help with discipline. I also want to continue to work on classroom management, although my grade 5 classes have gotten a lot better over the past few weeks. A lot of this I might focus on more for the second term, however, because apparently exams start soon! No idea when, which is typical, but apparently they are a lot sooner than I expected.