Counting my blessings on the second Friday of term 4

All teachers of seniors, would probably understand the emotions surrounding the “final weeks”  of teaching our senior students.  Some of them won’t be returning to school.  Some of them are focused and working hard, others have already passed their year level, and are just wasting their time away, others are totally stressed out and nervous about the upcoming externals…I call it my  QUALITY STREET moments…the whole MIX, and in South Africa on the smarties box, it says one word: wotalotigot…How blessed am I to guide my students through these last moments of their school year. While I’m sitting here a tear is crawling over my cheek.  I am so blessed to still care about my job as much as I do, and yes, I must admit, the special students that I have, make it so much easier to have this LOVE for my job.

It is also the FIRST year of my 35 years of teaching, that I feel my students have all the tools that they can have for preparing for their externals.  I have the JOY of putting these “tools” , worksheets, exemplars, teaching videos of myself and other teachers, on their class site.  Now, it is the fine line, of revising with them, keeping in mind: Am I doing too much, and they too little, am I leaving them to do it totally on their own, do I spoon feed them if they spend too much time with me?? Do I try and control their learning for the next few weeks up to the external??? In the words of one of my year 13’s: I actually feel good about the upcoming maths exams, as I know that I am doing my best, and : “miss this is really helping that we are doing it mostly on our own, and just ask questions, as we go along”….yay yay…hopefully it is working for ALL of them.

Well, at least I know that I’ve done my BEST, to encourage them to go FULL OUT ! I’ve put the tools in their shed (class site) and it is now up to them to take the tools and “build” something.  I am at peace, happy and content…I’ve done my part.  Good luck to all seniors doing externals.