This week is a bit of a dishevelment of epiphanies I have had.
This week I picked up another teaching responsibility, reading. My host teacher laughed at me because I realized the difficulty of planning and covering so much material for the first time. Since the beginning of the program I was told the skill I was to work on with a student or a group of students and I developed a lesson based around that. Once I got the basal in my hands, it was rather overwhelming looking at all the information I needed to cover and all the activities and workbook pages they already had assigned. Now in classes throughout the program we have discussed teachers who look at that basal like it is the most important thing, and some that use it as a guide but throw in their own personal touches and activities to the skills being taught. I have always told myself that I wanted to be a creative teacher and inspire creative students. When I had this basal in front of me, it was hard to get those creative juices flowing when word for word I was being told what I could say and what I should do. It was a difficult challenge looking at all the information provided and assessing what I believed was important and what I thought I could go without, or improve through my own activity. After manipulating a lesson plan for hours and hours and hours…I was finally ready for Monday and my first (almost) full time teaching day. I quickly learned bright and early Monday morning that there is never enough time to do everything you had hoped. With pep talks from my host teacher, I have quickly learned to adapt and your lessons plans, well… they are just plans. There is no way you are going to be able to cover and follow them word for word, activity for activity. I had three pages of detailed lesson plans for reading and language arts. By the end of Monday, I had arrows pointing to different days, things crossed out and new ideas written in. I looked down and had to laugh.
Another thing I found I really need to improve on and work on as a preservice teacher is how I model and explain things to my students. Model, model, model. It is so important especially in the younger grades. They need to see and hear before they can understand. While I think I am explaining it well, I can see in my students faces I am not. This has been a challenge for me to be able to reword things and find new, different ways of explaining because not every student and not every class is going to be the same. MODEL!
Now, onto those days where your brain is just somewhere else… Seems today my brain decided to stay home while I went into school. The morning started out with a new route I thought I would try. It seemed like a good idea, but it wasn’t. I took some small, potholed, West Virginia back roads to get to the Interstate 68 entrance this morning. Thinking I would skip out on some Mileground traffic and the constant stop and go of stop lights, in my head it sounded like a good plan. I was enjoying my morning drive with only me and a few other cars on the road, until I saw the flashing lights. A car tried to make a tight turn around one of the bends and ended up sideways blocking the entire road. Since this is a back road, it is very narrow. A tow truck was there maneuvering the car to move it out of the way, but I got trapped on this road for a good twenty minutes throwing me a bit behind schedule to say the least. Lesson learned: Don’t take back roads to work. Anyways, I arrived to school a little after the students started walking in. I laughed about the incident but I was unaware of its side effects at the time. The rest of the day turned into me being all over the place. I was able to catch up on activities I was behind on and was able to lead and even videotape a lesson (that’s coming next) but I just felt a little out of in all in the same sense. Luckily, I had my wonderful host teacher there to remind me, “Umm, Ms. Hanahan are you going to do your lesson on statements and questions?” After I was so proud of completing my inflected endings lesson and my spelling word lesson at the perfect time to start math. “Oops” I said. By that point I learned if you are having one of those days, embrace it. Make sure you stay on track and complete the task at hand (teaching) but have a joke and involve your students. They think it’s funny when the teacher messes up and it makes you smile when they smile. Sometimes you just need to laugh at yourself and let the kids in on the joke too.
Quick last remark for the week: Today I videotaped a lesson I did with vocabulary words. With wonderful cinematography by my host teacher, I was able to see what my students were doing while I was teaching. While I thought I saw everything, I sure didn’t. While I thought I was involving everyone, I wasn’t. Videotaping is such a key in teacher development and growth. It really helps you see things you normally wouldn’t. I would recommend this for new teachers and it is something I will try to keep up with even once I have my own classroom and are a few years in the field.
Lauren, Video taping...we have talked about watching ourselves and then realizing what is going on. It would be a good idea if all teachers taped themselves at least once a year if not more and then just watched themselves. I believe it would make all of us better teachers.
You are such a wonderful person with a great sense of humor...being late due to new way to school, forgetting to teach language...but you recouped yourself quite well I might say!!! Remember "BE FLEXIBLE" always in teaching!!! Tomorrow is another day and you will shine!!!
Thank goodness you learned your lesson about detours with Robin covering your back. I always need that lead time in the morning to get my focus. If something occurs and I am late, I struggle to get on track the rest of the day. I know how you felt that day:) I agree with Robin on the videotaping. What we perceive to be going on and what is actually happening are two different things. It would be wonderful if you got the chance to do another video at the end of your student teaching to compare the two sessions.
This week is a bit of a dishevelment of epiphanies I have had.
ReplyDeleteThis week I picked up another teaching responsibility, reading. My host teacher laughed at me because I realized the difficulty of planning and covering so much material for the first time. Since the beginning of the program I was told the skill I was to work on with a student or a group of students and I developed a lesson based around that. Once I got the basal in my hands, it was rather overwhelming looking at all the information I needed to cover and all the activities and workbook pages they already had assigned. Now in classes throughout the program we have discussed teachers who look at that basal like it is the most important thing, and some that use it as a guide but throw in their own personal touches and activities to the skills being taught. I have always told myself that I wanted to be a creative teacher and inspire creative students. When I had this basal in front of me, it was hard to get those creative juices flowing when word for word I was being told what I could say and what I should do. It was a difficult challenge looking at all the information provided and assessing what I believed was important and what I thought I could go without, or improve through my own activity. After manipulating a lesson plan for hours and hours and hours…I was finally ready for Monday and my first (almost) full time teaching day. I quickly learned bright and early Monday morning that there is never enough time to do everything you had hoped. With pep talks from my host teacher, I have quickly learned to adapt and your lessons plans, well… they are just plans. There is no way you are going to be able to cover and follow them word for word, activity for activity. I had three pages of detailed lesson plans for reading and language arts. By the end of Monday, I had arrows pointing to different days, things crossed out and new ideas written in. I looked down and had to laugh.
Another thing I found I really need to improve on and work on as a preservice teacher is how I model and explain things to my students. Model, model, model. It is so important especially in the younger grades. They need to see and hear before they can understand. While I think I am explaining it well, I can see in my students faces I am not. This has been a challenge for me to be able to reword things and find new, different ways of explaining because not every student and not every class is going to be the same. MODEL!
ReplyDeleteNow, onto those days where your brain is just somewhere else…
Seems today my brain decided to stay home while I went into school. The morning started out with a new route I thought I would try. It seemed like a good idea, but it wasn’t. I took some small, potholed, West Virginia back roads to get to the Interstate 68 entrance this morning. Thinking I would skip out on some Mileground traffic and the constant stop and go of stop lights, in my head it sounded like a good plan. I was enjoying my morning drive with only me and a few other cars on the road, until I saw the flashing lights. A car tried to make a tight turn around one of the bends and ended up sideways blocking the entire road. Since this is a back road, it is very narrow. A tow truck was there maneuvering the car to move it out of the way, but I got trapped on this road for a good twenty minutes throwing me a bit behind schedule to say the least. Lesson learned: Don’t take back roads to work. Anyways, I arrived to school a little after the students started walking in. I laughed about the incident but I was unaware of its side effects at the time. The rest of the day turned into me being all over the place. I was able to catch up on activities I was behind on and was able to lead and even videotape a lesson (that’s coming next) but I just felt a little out of in all in the same sense. Luckily, I had my wonderful host teacher there to remind me, “Umm, Ms. Hanahan are you going to do your lesson on statements and questions?” After I was so proud of completing my inflected endings lesson and my spelling word lesson at the perfect time to start math. “Oops” I said. By that point I learned if you are having one of those days, embrace it. Make sure you stay on track and complete the task at hand (teaching) but have a joke and involve your students. They think it’s funny when the teacher messes up and it makes you smile when they smile. Sometimes you just need to laugh at yourself and let the kids in on the joke too.
Quick last remark for the week:
ReplyDeleteToday I videotaped a lesson I did with vocabulary words. With wonderful cinematography by my host teacher, I was able to see what my students were doing while I was teaching. While I thought I saw everything, I sure didn’t. While I thought I was involving everyone, I wasn’t. Videotaping is such a key in teacher development and growth. It really helps you see things you normally wouldn’t. I would recommend this for new teachers and it is something I will try to keep up with even once I have my own classroom and are a few years in the field.
Lauren,
ReplyDeleteVideo taping...we have talked about watching ourselves and then realizing what is going on.
It would be a good idea if all teachers taped themselves at least once a year if not more and then just watched themselves. I believe it would make all of us better teachers.
You are such a wonderful person with a great sense of humor...being late due to new way to school, forgetting to teach language...but you recouped yourself quite well I might say!!! Remember "BE FLEXIBLE" always in teaching!!!
Tomorrow is another day and you will shine!!!
Thank goodness you learned your lesson about detours with Robin covering your back. I always need that lead time in the morning to get my focus. If something occurs and I am late, I struggle to get on track the rest of the day. I know how you felt that day:) I agree with Robin on the videotaping. What we perceive to be going on and what is actually happening are two different things. It would be wonderful if you got the chance to do another video at the end of your student teaching to compare the two sessions.
ReplyDelete