Nerine's Reflection 5

Reflect on your teaching practicum so far:

What have you learned from your experience during TP?

What kinds of challenges do you foresee as you develop as a Literature teacher in your specific school context?

The most important thing I learnt from my experience during TP is to know and understand my own style. This applies not only to teaching style but manner when dealing with students, parents and fellow teachers.

In my school, Upper Sec Lit is not offered. Hence, my timetable is filled with 3 hours of Lit and 7-8 hours of EL each week. I take 3 Sec2 classes and they are doing Animal Farm. I have always thought the book to be interesting till I came to this school. The teacher who teaches it is retiring at the end of the year. To her, line-by-line analysis is the only way to learn a book thoroughly. Every Lit lesson involves her putting the book under the visualizer and going through the events word by word. My students completely hate this method of teaching and they rarely look forward to Lit lessons. They see every Lit class as a free period. When I asked these 3 classes if they want to take Upper Sec Lit next year, I get a resounding “NO!” I think it would be difficult finding even 15 students in the Sec2 Express cohort who would consider Combined Humanities (Lit + SS).

Because they have this mentality that Lit is not important since they will not study it next year, they place a lot more emphasis on other subjects. In addition, because the school only allocates 55 minutes a week for Lit, some lessons are taken up by Sports Day/public holidays etc and I get to see them only the following week. By then, it would be difficult to get them back on track again. This is extremely disheartening for me but at the same time, it makes me want to make a difference in this school. I believe that Lit is a subject students will enjoy if they enjoy the text and the teacher. One huge challenge I thus face in this school is helping students love and be passionate about the subject.