[Z]

Originally Posted by Ammi

...hmm, I'm a bit confused Zee..4th/5th year, for me that’s 8/9yr olds..are your years in Scotland different because grades don’t come until later and it sounds as though you’re talking about when you were older, at secondary or upper school..?...but anyway, it is quite interesting seeing things from both sides as it were, which you must have found as well...it’s kind of hard to get that balance with pupils who really just want to learn and not distract and those who do distract, especially when it’s regularly...you can’t just ignore the ones who find learning easy and think oh, you don’t need my help, you’ll do very well on your own because you motivate yourself..well not quite like that but you know what I mean...and you can’t exactly ‘reward’ bad behaviour but you also can’t and shouldn’t ignore these disruptions and the reasons for them...hmm, this is difficult because I actually think that your teacher was wrong in just concentrating on the ones who ‘wanted to learn’ and it’s sad those others failed but I don’t know exactly how it was and circumstances are different and have to be adapted so I’m not really judging her as such, I guess I’m just looking at your perspective of it, which was full of frustrations and understandably so...anyway, for me, I would feel that if pupils were constantly disruptive then I would be looking at why I wasn’t engaging their attention and if I was failing them..and maybe it would be nothing to do with me, there are different reasons for everything and you can’t always ‘fix’ them...but as frustrating as it is for others, I would actually be giving them a lot of attention but not in a way that I would give them the impression that I condoned their behaviour or that it was acceptable..but obviously that has to be balanced out with attention to the less disruptive pupils as well, so it’s hard...and I don’t work with older children so don’t encounter a wider range of problems ..but on the whole, as odd as it sounds, I would rather if a pupil found it hard to engage, that they were disruptive, rather than quiet as it would draw my attention to any potential learning difficulties much earlier so I kind of don’t always see it as a negative thing...but that’s from the ‘other side’ so I understand how frustrating it is for their fellow pupils and as I say, I don’t work with older children....

..it’s sad that your experience put you off though, I think maybe you would have made a good teacher and mentor...my friend’s son now teaches at the upper school he himself went to, which is quite unusual and we often have chats about it because it’s not only ‘from the other side’, it’s also the exact same people who taught him who are now his colleagues...I think even calling them by their first names is strange for him..but yeah, it is interesting reading your views because your experiences are from both sides....

Ahh yeah, I don't know exactly the equivalent in England but 4th year would be when English kids sit their GCSEs (year 10? year 11?) and 5th year would be when they sit AS levels; except in Scotland, 5th year is the important year for exams, so when English kids sit A Levels, Scottish kids would either be doing Advanced Highers or more Highers (Highers being the exams we do in 5th year) - Highers are what Scottish kids need to get into Scottish universities, so if you do well in 5th year you can pretty much relax in 6th year, and if you don't do well then you can retake things in 6th year and still go to uni at the same time as people who did well in 5th year, assuming you did well in 6th year. Does that make sense in terms of comparisons?

3rd year (14 years old-ish) you do the groundwork in preparation for 4th year (15 years old-ish) where you sit your Standard Grades; but at my school they started changing some courses to Intermediates instead of Standard Grades, so in 3rd year you would sit Intermediate 1 exams and 4th year you would sit Intermediate 2 exams. 5th year (16 years old-ish) you sit Highers, if you do well then you'll probably get unconditional offers for places at universities, if you don't do so well then you can rely on 6th year (17 years old-ish) to retake subjects, or sit Advanced Highers, which you would do either because you'd done well in 5th year and perhaps you wanted a challenge, or if you were applying to a really good uni (Oxford, Cambridge etc) because you would need to gain equivalent qualifications to A-Levels.

I used to dread working with the disruptive kids because it could be quite intimidating, I'd be sent outside with a group of kids, or sometimes half the class, and just be given work to teach to them, so I wouldn't even have time to prepare it or think about it, I'd just have to work on the spot. There were a lot of times where my lessons failed and there were a lot of times where it worked really well. I found that the best way to get a rowdy kid to engage was to joke along with them, if they like you then that's half the battle; kids don't want to listen to people they don't respect, but if they find you interesting or think you give fun lessons (though not to the point of pandering, obviously) then I found that they'd be willing to give you the time of day. Those hit/miss lessons were with kids aged 15 or thereabouts, that awkward stage where they're either really loud and hyperactive or painfully shy and awkward, I'd see a lot of mild bullying and at one point I even lectured some 13 year old kids about not picking on this one boy who was very, very quiet and used to be the butt of their jokes... and I had a similar situation with 9 year old kids where I had to shout at them in German and I couldn't tell if they were shocked that I was being serious or that I was speaking to them in German because I was there to teach English... Felt quite proud of myself for doing that though, they never once made fun of those kids again in both cases, at least not when I was there...