Stop pacing!!! For the love of all that is good, stop pacing!!!
This is the only thought that goes through my head I watch myself teach. I think I was actually more nervous teaching my fellow teachers than actual students. It seems apparent, especially since I faced the wrath of the camera on my first day of TEAM.
I also notice myself ending sentences in the middle. My mind will jump from one thought to another in such rapid succession (in case I forget it) that my mouth abandons the earlier thought. It is almost painful to watch.
I am so eager and energetic that it almost sickens me. I so want to impress everyone in the room and I think I went a little overboard. My mind drifted from delivering the lesson I wanted to deliver to getting evaluation points.
In a lot of ways I look worse than the last video. I am clearly uncomfortable with my surroundings, overtly conscious of the time, and not as confident as I should be with the lesson as planned, which is weird because the lesson was pretty good. It would be even better if I worked on tying the whole thing together in a more coherent way and merged in a lesson on similes and metaphors into it (something that will be made possible with a 90-minute block).
I also need to rehearse more. I think a lot of things (set, closure, transitions) would sound more natural if they were practiced. It is something I started doing later in the week and things got way better.
In some ways I am getting better. Despite my presence issues, I felt more prepared than ever. I know what to expect. I am on top of a lot of issues. I actually felt more like a teacher (the tie is so necessary for me to look the part).
It was a pretty harsh reminder that I am very much a work in progress. I am a little scared looking at this going into the fall.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Thursday, July 13, 2006
TEAM Teaching
I guess it has been a while since I did a self-assigned blog. Things have been mildly crazy with that whole learning how to teach thing and dealing with a whole slew of other things happening around me that are all out of my control.
For some reason it surprises me that I still get nervous every time I teach (it just reminds me that Andy Mullins was saying he was supernervous his entire first year--something that terrifies me a little). It scares me that I can't always communicate clearly with my classes. It terrifies me every time I pace the room and potentially distract my students.
TEAM teaching strikes me as mildly ridiculous. Five different teachers all watching me teach to people who already have college diplomas and giving me sometimes contradictory advice. Some teachers think I walk around too much. Others think I don't walk around enough. I don't really care at the end of the day if I always hit all four parts of my set and closure. I don't always care if my transitions are smooth. I don't always care that my assessment is clearly written down in my lesson plan.
I know it matters but right now a lot of things matter more. It matters more that this guy who has never given out a warning (downside of having six amazing summer school students) is somehow going to be able to lay down the law the moment the students walk through my door on August 7. It matters more that I have good content. It matters more that I know what to do when it hits the fan. It matters more that I remain upbeat and positive under pressure.
The whole evaluation thing makes me needlessly tense and often dramatically less confident in my teaching ability. I have all these problems (nervous walking/pacing, talking too fast at times, and my apparent inability to finish a sentence) and I am asked to solve these issues in 40-minute increments in front of people that often don't want to be there. It leads up to me standing in front of the class making myself more nervous, focusing on my problems instead of my content (or the many good things about my teaching style), and typically exacerbating the original problem instead of fixing it.
I don't know if I can be a good teacher until I actually do it. Until I actually am in a room with just my students. I will have to teach a class with no second years in the back, none of my peers in the midst, and nobody there watching my every move and evaluating me.
I know enough now where I can sink or swim. I just want to get the chance to do it. I will probably do a lot more of the former before I can do the latter. I think I can live with that.
For some reason it surprises me that I still get nervous every time I teach (it just reminds me that Andy Mullins was saying he was supernervous his entire first year--something that terrifies me a little). It scares me that I can't always communicate clearly with my classes. It terrifies me every time I pace the room and potentially distract my students.
TEAM teaching strikes me as mildly ridiculous. Five different teachers all watching me teach to people who already have college diplomas and giving me sometimes contradictory advice. Some teachers think I walk around too much. Others think I don't walk around enough. I don't really care at the end of the day if I always hit all four parts of my set and closure. I don't always care if my transitions are smooth. I don't always care that my assessment is clearly written down in my lesson plan.
I know it matters but right now a lot of things matter more. It matters more that this guy who has never given out a warning (downside of having six amazing summer school students) is somehow going to be able to lay down the law the moment the students walk through my door on August 7. It matters more that I have good content. It matters more that I know what to do when it hits the fan. It matters more that I remain upbeat and positive under pressure.
The whole evaluation thing makes me needlessly tense and often dramatically less confident in my teaching ability. I have all these problems (nervous walking/pacing, talking too fast at times, and my apparent inability to finish a sentence) and I am asked to solve these issues in 40-minute increments in front of people that often don't want to be there. It leads up to me standing in front of the class making myself more nervous, focusing on my problems instead of my content (or the many good things about my teaching style), and typically exacerbating the original problem instead of fixing it.
I don't know if I can be a good teacher until I actually do it. Until I actually am in a room with just my students. I will have to teach a class with no second years in the back, none of my peers in the midst, and nobody there watching my every move and evaluating me.
I know enough now where I can sink or swim. I just want to get the chance to do it. I will probably do a lot more of the former before I can do the latter. I think I can live with that.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
The Video
Watching the video of myself teach was one of the most painful experiences ever. As I watched myself talk about comparative and superlative modifiers with my class I felt a level of angst that compares to few others. For the first few minutes I kept asking myself questions about the spectacle that was unfolding in front of me.
Who was that guy pacing as he was talking about an overhead?
Who was that guy doing random arm motions as he spoke?
Who was that guy who used the words "like" and "ummm" way, way too often?
Who was that guy who used the word "rationale" without even thinking about it?
Who was that nerdy guy who was apologizing to the class for something they probably never noticed?
Could it be me? The moment it hit home was the second time I walked in front of the overhead in a nervous pace and then apologized, lost my train of thought, and took what seemed like an eternity to recover. I was waiting for the moment everyone in the room realized how badly I was doing. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
After 20 minutes of me ripping my teaching apart something happened. My kids were able to tell me what comparatives and superlatives were. They were giving me examples of the rules and what to do with them. I turned off the overhead projector, walked over to the board, and started making up examples. I was going by instinct for the first time that day. My speech slowed down and I was in control of the room.
I looked like a teacher.
I started getting teary-eyed. It was the greatest thing I have ever seen.
Now all I have to do is go from 30 minutes of solid teaching to 90 minutes by the fall. Can it be done? I certainly hope so.
Who was that guy pacing as he was talking about an overhead?
Who was that guy doing random arm motions as he spoke?
Who was that guy who used the words "like" and "ummm" way, way too often?
Who was that guy who used the word "rationale" without even thinking about it?
Who was that nerdy guy who was apologizing to the class for something they probably never noticed?
Could it be me? The moment it hit home was the second time I walked in front of the overhead in a nervous pace and then apologized, lost my train of thought, and took what seemed like an eternity to recover. I was waiting for the moment everyone in the room realized how badly I was doing. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
After 20 minutes of me ripping my teaching apart something happened. My kids were able to tell me what comparatives and superlatives were. They were giving me examples of the rules and what to do with them. I turned off the overhead projector, walked over to the board, and started making up examples. I was going by instinct for the first time that day. My speech slowed down and I was in control of the room.
I looked like a teacher.
I started getting teary-eyed. It was the greatest thing I have ever seen.
Now all I have to do is go from 30 minutes of solid teaching to 90 minutes by the fall. Can it be done? I certainly hope so.
Cooperative Learning and Paper Planes
I attempted to do both a cooperative learning and paper folding teaching technique in my summer school class. Neither went off as smoothly as I had planned but both taught be about the capabilities of my students and myself as a teacher.
The cooperative learning technique involved the students reading news articles (one from Time Magazine and one from the NY Times). They were broken into groups, with each person having a different role. They were to summarize and talk about the articles within the groups and then each group would teach each other about the article.
That approach fell flat and I could have seen it coming from a mile away. For some reason the kids didn't feel like talking about the article. A lot of them didn't really understand nor care what it was about until I talked about it (thus ruining the whole cooperative thing). The presentations and the group discussion went OK as long as I prodded the whole thing along.
I am thinking it was my fault for picking such hard content for them to work through. It also stalled because the kids weren't really the whole group structure for some reason. They seem to get a lot more out of it when I am the one doing the interacting with them. Part of me suspects they don't have the academic confidence a lot of the time to just read something and tell me their opinions about it.
This is something I am going to have to work on big time. I need to find approachable stuff and do a better job creating a space where conversations/ideas flow freely.
As I mentioned before, I also tried a paper folding activity. It wasn't really out of the book but it was related to the lesson at hand. After we went over following directions and procedures on the MCT I decided to mix it up and have a paper airplane folding. I gave each student a set of directions for a particular type of paper airplen and had them make them. It was pretty fun and for the most part a productive affair. It was a good end of week treat as well.
I don't think I will doing it in the fall since I will have considerably more than six students and control of the room would be tenous at best. It would take a while before I ever feel confident doing such an activity in my class.
The cooperative learning technique involved the students reading news articles (one from Time Magazine and one from the NY Times). They were broken into groups, with each person having a different role. They were to summarize and talk about the articles within the groups and then each group would teach each other about the article.
That approach fell flat and I could have seen it coming from a mile away. For some reason the kids didn't feel like talking about the article. A lot of them didn't really understand nor care what it was about until I talked about it (thus ruining the whole cooperative thing). The presentations and the group discussion went OK as long as I prodded the whole thing along.
I am thinking it was my fault for picking such hard content for them to work through. It also stalled because the kids weren't really the whole group structure for some reason. They seem to get a lot more out of it when I am the one doing the interacting with them. Part of me suspects they don't have the academic confidence a lot of the time to just read something and tell me their opinions about it.
This is something I am going to have to work on big time. I need to find approachable stuff and do a better job creating a space where conversations/ideas flow freely.
As I mentioned before, I also tried a paper folding activity. It wasn't really out of the book but it was related to the lesson at hand. After we went over following directions and procedures on the MCT I decided to mix it up and have a paper airplane folding. I gave each student a set of directions for a particular type of paper airplen and had them make them. It was pretty fun and for the most part a productive affair. It was a good end of week treat as well.
I don't think I will doing it in the fall since I will have considerably more than six students and control of the room would be tenous at best. It would take a while before I ever feel confident doing such an activity in my class.
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