This past Wednesday was the first day that when asked the question "How did it go?" I could honestly say "It was good." Up until that point, I had been relegated to saying "All right," or "Okay," or sometimes "Not so good." What made the difference? I felt like I was more of myself in front of the class that day. I managed to walk the fine line between being a teacher persona and staying true to who I am. At some point, I know I'll get the hang of this, and it won't feel so much like acting in front of everyone. Another contributing factor to its being a good day was how prepared I felt. I had a good presentation ready to go, and it took just the right amount of time to go through. Having the next two days off for interviews helped, too, but that's not something I can control, so I'll stay away from giving credit to the circumstances.
My goal going into this last week at Danville H.S. is to have multiple good days. Part of that means getting more prepared ahead of time. I've got a solid idea of what I'm going to do over the next five days, and now I need to start making those ideas into realities. It's difficult for me to be in a situation where there's always more that I can do to be prepared. I like to be able to check things off of lists, and I can't really do that with teaching because nothing is ever really closed. For today, I can just use my time as wisely as possible to get ready for the next few days. There's no point stressing myself out before the week has even begun. A cool and calm me is going to be a better teacher for the students in my five classes.
In addition, I'll try to incorporate a little more of myself into the lessons. I snuck in a picture of my looking like a Weasley twin, which the students enjoyed. It also broke up the lesson into two distinct parts. It acted as a quick time to loosen everyone up and take a quick break from thinking about trigonometry.
One more thing I learned from this past week is that being absent is sometimes more work than being present. It's a lot of work to write sub plans, even if your "sub" is your cooperating teacher who does this thing every year. Now, having been gone for two days, I need to look at what I had planned to happen, what actually did happen, and what I want to happen and try to align them all. It'll take a while, but I'm not nervous or worried. I'm just looking forward to my next good day.
2 comments:
How did it go this past week? Getting the hang of things? I have to tell you that last semester I thought you were the closest thing to "a natural" that I've seen in a long time. Documenting some of your struggles is a lesson for all of us. I hope that with hindsight its all compelling stuff for you, the good and the bad.
Thanks for the encouragement, Prof Arvan. This past week was pretty good, overall. I think I got the hang of things... just in time to leave and start anew at Jefferson Middle School in Champaign. The last day didn't go so well for some classes. (They felt a little disorganized what with my leaving and it being Friday.) I think it was a good experience, though. I'm about to write a little reflection of sorts, as a matter of fact.
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