To teach a class at a time is one thing…. but to teach two or more classes at a time may be unimaginable…but it happens.
I have taught in the public elementary for eleven (11) years before I left the service hoping to find a new career path somewhere but I still ended up teaching in my new niche.
I came back and then I got the chance to teach again in the public school but this time a multi-grade – a combination class.
When I was given this assignment, I nearly thought of giving up because I never had the chance to teach in a classroom setting of a combination class – two classes in one, like coffee and cream in one or vanilla and chocolate in one, as in ice cream.
Teaching a multi-grade class is really a challenging work – more than the challenges of a regular class setting, more than the demands of a mono-grade, more than the sweats and pains of a single class, a multi-grade class requires so much more than that.
A multi-grade class requires more techniques and strategies; more preparation and groundwork ; and more patience and energy.
Can you imagine yourself in the middle of a class where both sets of learners have their own needs and expectations and that you will have to satisfy them both at the same time given the same time frame but different courses of activities and objectives?
You teach one class on respiratory system and the nervous system on the other. You teach one for some time; then spend time to instruct what to do next on the exercises, then go to the other class and do the same.
Imagine that you will have to do that the whole day, isn’t that really very tiring and exhausting – but do we have a choice?
The only choice we have is which one to teach first and which one will have its practice and self-learning exercises.
Some people in the community tend to underrate multi-grade teachers since most MG’s teach in small, satellite schools. The community normally have better and greater regard for teachers in the big and central schools – as if thinking they are far better and far more excellent.
But it has to be realized that teaching in a multi-grade class does not make you less of a teacher – it can actually make more of you because it gets more of you – the better of you.
Rather than spending some time, you will have to spend more, rather than to discuss one time, you will have to double the discussion; rather than to take care of a single set of pupils, you will have to take care of two.
It gets more of what the teacher has, and what the teacher is. An MG teacher always takes a balance of both worlds she keeps spinning on the palm of her hand. She always needs to set equilibrium of what she does in order to meet all the needs and expectations of the two sets of growing minds she handles.
An MG teacher is truly a multi-tasker – who knows how to do more things at the same time with the same level of efficacy and efficiency. MG teachers do….for all we know.
By: Gemmaruth G. Castro | Jose V. Abejar Memorial Elementary School | Abucay, Bataan
