The biggest difference is the absence of the second years. Just when I started to feel like I was getting to know them and appreciate their advice and support, they leave. I hope you guys are enjoying your time off and spare a thought for your comrades who are still at summer school.
The next biggest difference is that I'm now teaching middle school for this session. They seem to be more open and interested in the material. There are much fewer of them (14 today). Also, they aren't as big as the high school students. So far this has meant that they have been much easier to control. Here's to hoping this continues.
As for me, it feels like I haven't made much progress. I feel like I am jumping through hoops in terms of following protocol, but I feel like it hasn't helped me in effectively getting my students to learn. I also feel less and less creative when it comes to making lessons interesting or designing engaging sets. I had a decent idea last night, but my execution could have been better this morning during the actual lesson.
I am still struggling with how to relate to students. We watched a movie this evening about two mtcers who'd completed their first year. During a Q & A session afterwards, they said that building relationships with students is key, but you won't see it until the second year, and it helps to do things outside the classroom. I've suspected that following a rigid discipline system could have the unintended consequence of making it hard to get your students to open up to you, and this seems to go with that. I hope my students will eventually behave because they want to, for my sake and their own, not because they don't want a writing assignment. I'm trying to answer the question of how to get to that point.
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