First Impressions of OTSS
When I found out my Year 1 practicum will be in Ottawa Technical Secondary School, I immediately researched to find out more about the school, because I have not heard of a 'technical school' before. OTSS offers adaptive programs catered to students to develop social and vocational skills needed for getting employed in the skills trade after graduation.
It is a very different type of school from what I have known school as is. Usually, we associate high school as an institution for students to study hard and step up to higher education. My previous experiences of teaching and tutoring students have all been to help students achieve success in their studies, to get high marks. However, students in OTSS are at school for a different purpose. This year's practicum will definitely be an unique experience for me to work with a totally different set of students!
First Day of Practicum
First day of Practicum is spent getting to know the school, the students, the schedule, and how classes are run. Class sizes in OTSS are small. The main class I will be focused on (for lesson planning) in the next month is grade 11 college math class. They are currently in the Personal Finance unit, learning how to budget and use credit cards. This is my first time getting to know the college math curriculum, and I find this unit quite interesting as it relates math to our everyday world. Math at a secondary level is very abstract, and students often become disengaged when they don't understand. I believe that making real-life connections can spark students’ interests in math rather than learning math for the sake of fulfilling the requirements to graduate.
I also supported a grade 10 math class today, where students are working on Trigonometry. I noticed that in both classes, each student is at a different stage of the current units. They were all working on different worksheets; some were working on worksheets assigned during the class, and some were still finishing previously assigned worksheets, which means that there is a large range of abilities within one class. I walked around the classroom today to assist students who needed help with the questions in the worksheets.
My Associate Teacher, Ms. Lindsey Lemon, is a Student Success Teacher, so I will be spending the afternoons with her in the Resource Room. Here, I will be working one-on-one with students on the subjects they are doing Credit Recovery or Rescue towards. I think this will be a great opportunity to build rapport with the students. By chatting with the students more and get to know more about their backgrounds, I hope that I can understand what contributes to their behaviours and/or struggles at school and help accordingly.
Looking forward to the next practicum days and block in December!
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