Week Four

Week four – the short yet continuous week

This was thought to be an amazing week, only three days and then weekend and rest again. Unfortunately, this week seemed to be never-ending!

Wednesday started, the day started cheerfully teachers celebrating birthdays that occurred during the past weekend, all together a happy environment. My thoughts were on another planet tough. On Tuesday I tried to prepare as much as possible for my evaluation lesson taking place on Thursday. All of this preparation seem to have been wasted as the teacher did not agree with what I had prepared and what she was still doing, a communication gap. This was luckily to be fixed as me and the involved teacher decided on a topic and manner of teaching for the next day. Another teacher on the staff gave me some tips and guidelines of how to go about.

Thursday took its time to eventually begin, the minutes before my lesson felt like hours and my nerves ever increasing. During the break announcements I was informed that my lecturer has arrived and is waiting for me. Wow, this just became very real. My mind was a mess, trying to have everything in order and trying to establish whether there is anything that I could have missed.

The whole experience ended up being almost the exact opposite of what I expected. I expected my lecturer to arrive, him/her to attend my lesson and afterwards to be a real critic about what he/she just saw. To my surprise, the person coming to evaluate me was an elderly man, young in spirit and extremely kind. Lectures from other institutions have been in the waiting room, and there was nothing special about it, however this Oom. He created a cheerful atmosphere and was kindly speaking and engaging everyone around. I must say this eased the greeting process, he was friendly, exactly explained the process of what is about to take place, a short history about him and why he is here and not my lecturer.

After break we went to meet the learners at their reporting station, and we all continued to the class. Once in the class we greeted, I introduced the Oom and explained to the learners that we are just to continue as normal. After my short introduction, he also spoke to the learners. At first I was taken aback as this was unexpected, but it ended up being comforting to both me and the students. The lesson began and ended…

Receiving feedback was more of a learning and pleasant experience, than what I expected. The lesson was discussed and recommendations regarding it made. The most important of which is that I need to better time my lesson plans and maybe involve the learners by having them help me time activities.

Mr Honing (Oom), I thank you! I learned so much more than I could have asked for. It’s amazing meeting people who share a passion with you and above that share their wisdom freely.

After that lesson third period I was drained and the rest of Thursday just did not want to pass. Friday finally arrived and was well celebrated, by both learners and teachers. Somehow this short week ended up feeling longer than most other five day weeks.