New Challenges...back in the classroom.

I have been out of the classroom for almost 5 years now. That is a long time to be out of the system in South Africa where our curriculum changes so regularly.

CAPS came in when I was leaving and has brought with it a bigger workload for the teachers, more admin, and the kids seem to be learning less and less.

I was employed at the Technology Integration Specialist at my school in 2013. The aim was to help the teachers improve their general tech skills as well as to give them the confidence to use tech in the classroom to support teaching and learning.

This was obviously a challenge as many teachers like the "chalk & talk" fashion of teaching and found it hard to change the way they teach. Some teachers grabbed this and took it by the horns and ran with it. In the time under this portfolio, I have learnt a lot and extended my knowledge in many fields.

I returned to school from maternity leave and took on an entirely new portfolio. MAKERSPACE TEACHER!

We started implementing STEAM (Science, Technolgy, English/Engineering, Arts and Maths) in 2015. This is a very new concept to us in South Africa and not many schools were doing it. I have spent much time researching, following blogs and reading up as much as I can to make sense of this as well as how to implement this in the classrooms.

With having spent plenty of time researching and extending my knowledge I felt like I could make a go of this! I was so excited and nervous!

I ran a Makerspace Class for grades 1 - 7 (7-year-olds - 13-year-olds) for a full term and then took on a maternity post in the Computer Class in the third term.

We do not have a curriculum or Standards or any form of guidance in what needs to be taught in the Computer Lab and so it has pretty much been a fly by the seat of my pants kind of classes. I have run to my favourite blogs and Facebook groups and scoured the internet for lessons and ideas to implement in my classroom.

The integration of Makerspace and Computer lab has gone so well the past two terms that we have decided to run it as a full Innovation Lab next year!

We will be converting the Computer lab and the next door classroom into one big classroom and I will have two teachers to team teach with me! I am so excited! Demolition and renovations start on the 14 November 2018 - Just before the end of year assessments.

My biggest challenge at this point is trying to plan a curriculum for each grade that will progress yearly and will also enrich and run alongside their current classroom learning.

I am looking forward to the new challenges ahead.
I will be posting as we go along as well as some of the lessons I have been doing!