Month: May 2017

End of Placement.

I can’t believe just how much I have been able to do throughout my Learning from Life placement. I’ve been so involved with production I’ve been in a bit of a seuss bubble, I’ve forgotten what it’s like to not be constantly singing show tunes. I have honestly had the best time ever with this placement. I’ve been able to become involved with things i’ve never had experience of before and my confidence has developed so much.

I have became so settled over here that I keep forgetting that I’m actually in Australia. Everyone I’ve worked with, from the council, to the libraries and especially the school have been so welcoming and supportive. My experience in the council has been fantastic and to be able to work so closely with important members of the Mandurah community has been invaluable. Helping to organise something as big a scale as stretch has been so rewarding and has allowed me to really appreciate the amount of effort that goes into planning and creating such events.

The library was so welcoming and I really miss being part of the team there, it was such a nice working environment to be a part in. Working closely with members of staff there has given me so many ideas for arts and crafts projects to take into future classrooms and I will be eternally grateful that I have been given an opportunity like this.

My experience at Mandurah Catholic College has been absolutely insane but fantastic. it has been so fast paced and fun to be so involved with putting together Seussical the Musical. My favorite part of being so involved with Seussical is watching the pupils confidence in themselves grow over the past two months. The cast all formed such strong friendships over the past 5  months that they have been involved with the show and to watch it all come together really was something special. The buzz in the air all weekend as they performed at MPAC was infectious and I truly fell privileged to be a part of it.

Personal Growth

Throughout my Learning from Life placement I really feel that I have developed a lot of my own interpersonal skills. My confidence in my own abilities has vastly improved as I have essentially been thrown in the deep end in everything I’ve done over here and absolutely loved it. It has been so manic but it has just meant I’ve had to push myself and adapt and I feel that I have adapted to many situations pretty well.

Being over here has really made me think about how I view myself as a teacher and the sort of teacher I want to become. Working with many staff members so closely over the past couple of weeks out of school hours has allowed me to witness they way they interact with pupils and has allowed me to model some of my own interactions and behavioural methods like them.

WEEK 6 -SHOWTIME!

 

Oh the things you can think,  when you think about Seuss! It’s production week! My mentor has relief all week so there are no lessons just concentrating on getting all little things completed for production. There are so many things to be done, all the tiny backstage issues you don’t even think about. All costumes have to be completed. All of our who outfits had to be made more ‘who-ey’ for being on stage. Here are an example of some dresses that were made.

The first half of the week has been a whirlwind of rehearsals at school and last minute costume and prop amendments and I’ve loved every minute of it. It has been absolutely mental but so good to really get the full experience of productions and has gave me a good insight into what it is like to be involved in theatre.

Thursday we had to move all of our props and set into MPAC, this took 2 moving trucks from the school and lots of nerves/excitement from staff. Once we had set up at MPAC, we done a full run through with pupils to smooth over any numbers that needed fixing and to ensure that everyone is confident with their scenes. At 4pm we were able to move into the main stage and do a  full tech run through and let the cast get used to the new space and lighting etc.

Friday was a full dress rehearsal in morning then show time at night! There was a Friday night show, a Saturday matinee and then the final show on Saturday night. The cast were absolutely phenomenal and everyone that came to view it was shocked at the level of professionalism for a high school production. I am so incredibly proud of the pupils and actually got quite emotional a few times due to being so overwhelmed with just how amazing they truly are!

WEEK FIVE!

I am gutted to be over and done with in the library but was so excited to be back in the School environment. I will hardly get to teach on this placement as there will be so much focus on our production: Seussical. My mentor is getting relief next week so that all time can be spent on finalising everything for our production to go on stage at Mandurah Performing Arts Centre (MPAC) . This week was mostly spent observing music and health lessons that my mentor was teaching. This has been so beneficial to me as my mentor works with pre-primary kids, kindergarten and junior school pupils. This has allowed me to gain more experience with infants before MA3 placement next year.

I’ve really loved observing health and music lessons as I have not taught either before and now I feel more confident in being able to teach certain topics. Throughout our lessons with Health, we have been discussing medicine and how to properly take medicine with the younger pupils. It’s also been incredibly beneficial to be observing music lessons as my mentor also teaches the Year 7’s, which is equivalent to 1st year of secondary school. I’ve loved working with such a wide and varying range of ages in subjects that I am inexperienced in.

However, my favourite experience so far has becoming so involved with Seussical. Rehearsals are becoming more frequent with Thursday rehearsals happening as well as Sundays 9-5 and Mondays after school. I have been involved in creating hats such as those pictured above for all of the senior ‘whos’ to wear during the show. Another prac student has joined MCC and is in her 4th year of studying to be a secondary drama teacher so it has been amazing to compare and discuss the differences in our experiences of studying to become teachers. Me and her have been put in charge of props and costumes and I am getting so excited for next week – production week- the closer we get! I have never been involved in any sort of theatre production so this is all entirely new to me and I love how much all of the pupils are able to really feed off of each others energy to become so excited for the show and passionate to put on an amazing performance.

Seussical is a musical that combines many of the dearly loved Dr. Seuss’s tales into an all singing, all dancing show. To be perfectly honest I could not stand musicals up until recently and was a wee bit put off of the thought of doing a musical, but my mind is totally changed now. I was not expecting this level of professionalism from a school show whatsoever. I was expecting one show to be put on in the school gym, this is totally different to what I expected. The amount of talent these pupils have in this musical is nothing short of astounding and the level of professional commitment they all have towards the show is incredible. I’ve absolutely adored working with the high school pupils throughout the past couple of weeks and feel it’s allowed me to really make the most of my experience by working with such a varied age group.

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