How well connected are practice and theory? Studying to become a teacher you study for 5 years of which 20 week are practice. The rest of the time you study didactics, pedagogy and of course the subject you are going to teach. Is this really the best way? Well, yes you can't take away time from learning the subject you are teaching since you need the knowledge, if you are going to teach English you need to know a lot of history, grammar, linguistics, literature and of course how to implement this in the classroom. But is it enough just to talk about it in the classroom? Shouldn't teacher trainees get the opportunity to actually practice what they learn? In one way I think that for a 5 year long programe it's really wierd that you only get 20 weeks of practice and the rest of the time you have approximately 5h/ week of lectures and the rest of the time you study by yourself either at home or at the library.

Personally, I would love to have more practice since you learn so much and you get to find your own teaching role. I found that I hate standing in front of the class preaching about grammar and stuff, that I rather get the students activated and walk around in the classroom and interact with the students and answer questions. This way I believe you get more knowledge about what the students actually know and you get a different kind of connection to your students and your students ask questions. All students are not that confident that they want to speak in front of the entire class so I really believe that walking around gives all students the opportunity to ask you questions without everyone listening.

Being on your teacher practicum also gives you an opportunity to grow as a person. I would have never believed that I would be confident enough to teach grammar or anything at upper secondary school. I have always been really shy and didn't like to speak in front of the class and I still hate giving presentations at uni and I get really nervous but in some way you don't get nervous when teaching and speking in fron of your students. It's relly wierd that talking to 30 students doesn't make you nervous but you really enjoy it but talking in front of your friends makes you so nervous and you forget half of what you are supposed to say.

What I want to say is, practice makes perfect and the more you get to practice and try different things the more you learn.

I have been doing a lot of writing the past few weeks. All my exams are write a paper about this and that and we are also going to do the exakt same thing orally just to make you life a living hell :D and to make things even more fun we always do the same thing, write a lesson plan about this. Sometimes you feel, do you even know how it looks like in schools today? It's not possible to write a 10 page lesson plan for every lesson you have and who the hell cares about what Harmer or Lundahl says about listening, writing, grammar, speaking or anything for that matter? As long as you can explain why you do what you do that should be enough right?

At least for the next paper I write I don't have to do a lesson plan but I have to write a minimum of 2000 words about using film in the classroom. I decided to write about stereotypical women in Game of Thrones focsuing primarily on Daenerys, Arya and Cersei and compare the three and then argue why it would be a great idea to use this in the classroom, how it is better to use film instead of books for teaching about stereotypes and so on. I have an idea, now I just have to make it happen and deadline is in one week. Wish me luck!

Okey, I know the week started yesterday but I didn't have any lectures yesterday and thus didn't need to leave my appartement. Today, on the other hand, I had a lecture in Film didactics and we basically watched a lot of clips as examples about what the teacher talked about. We discussed stereotypes and norm critique in films, focusing on native americans and how they are portrayed in film.

We also talked about what rights a teacher has when it comes to show films and clips in the classroom. What is legal and what is not legal. SVTplay and TV4play is legal to show while films are a bit more difficult since the school is an institution. When it comes to films a teacher is not allowed to show film or series from a private account on for example Netflix or if he/she has borrowed a dvd, youtube is not allowed either. However, almost all teachers uses youtube or other media to show films and clips that the institution itself doesn't have the rights for. 

I think that as long as you can validate your choice of film and you have a clear purpose of using that film I don't see a problem with it. No one will sue you for using film in the classroom for educational purposes. Basically, film in the classroom and where you get it from is on your consious as a teacher and if you are fine with downloading then download, if you are not you can find clips and films on youtube and it is possible to "download" them to you computer thorugh various free programs you can find on the internet. 

Showing your students a film can today be a bit controversial. Should students watch film in school? Why or why not? I believe that if you use film or film clips in the right way it can be very beneficial and an easy tool to teach the students about themes, setting, plot, characters and so on. You can of course teach this through reading but sometimes it cna be nice both for students and for teachers to do something else in a new way, maybe something you haven't tried before. When using film in the classroom you have to make sure that the students don't only see the film but that they read it. There is a difference in seeing and reading and your job is to teach them how to read film.

To be able to read film the students need to watch actively and not only watching the film as entertainment. You can do this by forcing them to take notes or answering questions at the same time as they are watching. You can also choose to only use extracts instead of whole films since time is often a problem when it comes to film. However, you have to think about copyright and make sure you follow the rules when using extracts.

I believe it might be easier to teach the students about setting, plot, characters and so forth by using film since it is portrayed in a different way in films than it is in books. I don't mean that you use film instead of books but as a complement to books. It is sometimes easier to understand what you can see through examples than by reading about something.

I had an interesting discussion today at the university about bullying and how far it has gone the past few years. Was it really this big when I went to school? It probably were it's just something you choose to ignore when you grow up I asume. Our discussion made me wonder, do students actually know what bullying is? Do they understand what a bully is? I'm actually not so sure about that since the word "bully" hasn't any affect on students in todays school. They simply don't care about what they do to each other and that words can hurt so much more than if they hit someone.

I'm thinking that students today think bullying isn't that bad since adults do it all the time on the internet. Adults comment, say mean things and bully other people on social media, so if the behaviour is okey when you are an adult why shouldn't it be okey when you are in school? For teachers it's really difficult to draw a line since adults step over it all the time and students who see maybe their parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles bully people online then the behaviour is in one way accepted, the grown ups shows through their actions that this kind of behaviour is okey, so why should the students listen to the teachers saying it is not?

Social media has exploded during the last couple of years and it hardly even existed when I grew up, but today a lot of the bullying going on in schools are done in the cyberspace. Bullying going on on the internet, whose responsibility is it to stop it actually? In an article published in Skolvärden (link to article here) it says that The School Inspection thinks it is the teachers responsibility if the students involved attends the same school. My imediate thought about this is, how can it be the teachers responsibility if it happens outside of school during the weekend or a holiday break? Teachers cannot monitor the internet 24/7, it's not manageble, not with everything else the teachers have to do today. 

Bullying is a huge problem today, and there is still not a solution to it, but I do not believe that the responsibility should be put on teachers alone. Teachers see the students for 8 hours a day 5 days a week what about the 16 hours that are left? Shouldn't it be the parents responsibility to monitor what their children do on the internet when they are at home? It feels more logical that the adult that spend the most time with the child should be responsible and that is not the teacher it is the parent. It is the parents job to raise the child and that responsibility cannot be put on the teacher.

This week we talked a bit about using drama in the classroom. Drama is a big part of literature and it is different from what students might usually read. But drama is so much more that just reading plays, drama can be done is so many different ways. A webpage we found and I think is very useful is this one: http://esldrama.weebly.com/

Using drama you can teach your students how to behave in different situations, about body language, how to respond in different kind of situations and so much more. Drama is not only about Shakespeare or some other old person. I believe you have to make drama fun in order for students to appreciate it. I don't mean that you shouldn't use Shakespear I mean that you have to do something with it, make the students act it out, rewrite it, make it modern. Make your students think about what the play is actually about and let them act out a scene or two. Or use something completely different, let the students act out a debate or interview with some famous authors they have to inpersonate. Drama can be used in many different ways and we should take advantages of it and not only do what it is easy but do what can be fun!

I don't know if I would call the book series Fifty Shades controversial or not, but now I have read the second book in the thrilogy and I'm actually surprised about the turn in the novels. I read Fifty Shades in upper secondary school for a school assignment and bought all three books but after I read the first one I didn't tuch the others until know. I don't know why I didn't read the other ones, propably because of how sex was portrayed in the first and I felt maybe a bit ashamed for reading it. But now I have read the second one and well there is still a lot of hot sex described in the novel but the story really moves forward in an unexpected way.

I can't help but to notice all the similarities with Twilight, Ana and Christian's behaviour is so much like Bella's and Edward's in Twilight, which at times can be a bit disturbing I think. One main event I believe is really similar is the reaction both of them have when Ana leaves Christian in the end of the first novel. Ana kind of starves herself in the same way Bella does in Twilight and Christan claims he hasn't been able to think about something else but her very much like Edward in Twilight. Another similarity is when Christan disapears and Ana doesn't know if he is alive or not, her feelings is a lot like Bella's in the second book Full Moon where she doesn't know if she will be in time to save Edward or not. 

I wouldn't maybe use this particular novel in the classroom, mainly because of the sex scenes described but well I read it in school and analysed it from a feministic perspective and well for that this novel works really well. I believe that if teachers are to use this novel they need to have a goal or aim with it something more than just reading and analysing. I also believe that if the students chooses the novel themselves you as a teacher should let them read it and analyse it since the novel has a lot of interesting aspects in one way.

In schools teachers often talk about planning your time. But how do you do this? How do you plan your time effectively? Planning is difficult and you need to practice it but what is even more difficult is to do what you have planned. Planning is only the first part the second part so to execute the plan.

You can use different tools for planning, a calendar in your phone, computer, on paper it doesn't matter where you do your plan as long as you do it. At the moment I use google calendar but I will change into a paper calender as soon as the one I have is valid, which will be in the end of November.

In you weekly plan you first have to think about what days during the week am I booked? It can be practice, lectures, meetings, work anything that is set, that you cannot move. All the time that is left you need to figure out when to do what. You need to include studies in your plan, be sure to pinpoint what you are going to study not just that you are going to study but what. Then you also have to include time for meeting friends or doing other things such as, shopping, going to the cinema and so forth. To make it easier to get started with making your weekly plan choose a specific day of the week when you are going to do the planning. For example, Sundays, it's the last day of the week and you have the whole next week before you and your week start on the Monday and maybe you have to start studying for that test.

Want some more ideas about planning check out this short youtube clip: