NIKE

Well I finally gave my presentation this week and unlike last time I wasn't so stressed out about presenting it. I feel like the 6 point lesson plan template that Dr. Clark gave us to fill out and put almost word for word what we were going to say really hinders many people from doing better. There's an almost "I have to stick to the plan and can't deviate from it" mentality, at least it is with me. I scrapped my original plan and came up with a different lesson and only took me thirty minutes to put together. Instead of trying to put together an intricate lesson that revolved around students debating with each other I went with an entire lesson based solely on establishing relevancy revolving around discussion. I decided to stick with the Roman Republic but I was also teaching about US history and US government to connect it to other subjects and build a foundation of understanding so they will know something going into those classes the following semester. Overall the lesson went according to plan I just didn't get to cover all of it so it felt lacking in some areas. But the great thing was that the students were way more involved in the discussion than I originally though they would be which I think made the lesson better. Now there's a NC standard that says something along the lines of "Teachers make the content they teach engaging, relevant, and meaningful to students’ lives." And no I didn't memorize that, I had to go fishing on their site to find a standard that was relevant to this. But I believe that, at least to some extent, I achieved this. And honestly this lesson was fun to teach I only wish I had more time to teach it because I hadn't even got to the REALLY good stuff yet.

Plan B

This week has been quite a trip with everything that's been going on the projects, papers, quizzes, and tests. But working on my lesson plan for this week was a breeze and didn’t take me long to put together. It had everything in it that would make a great lesson but after this week I realized that I made one fatal mistake that I had not taken into consideration, students don’t always do what they’re told. And that's what happened, half of the class didn’t watch the video before class and the other half had a hard time understanding it, that was my own fault I’ll admit. But while I was fishin’ around on the NC Standards site trying to find one that relates to this situation and I guess that would be to know your content. I am a bit paranoid at times and sometimes that comes in handy because I had a feeling just before class that most people didn’t watch it and that my lesson would have to be scraped. But where this standard applies, at least to my understanding, is just a few hours before class I came up with a plan B just in case. Plan B was related to my first lesson but had a lot of changes to take into consideration that students didn’t know the content. Not sure if there is a standard relating to this but I think it would be a good one and that is always be prepared for the worst case scenario. But I knew my stuff well enough to create a whole new lesson to adapt to the current situation. The more I reflect on the new lesson the more I see some more flaws in my original that I had not seen before. But I think it offered a good experience that we need to be ready for anything and always have a plan B and be able to adapt to the new circumstances.

Sisyphus...

Today's class really went by fast, now I know a lot of people say that and don't mean it but seriously where on earth did the time go? I felt like we were only in there for thirty minutes or so. Not sure if that's because I was focused and didn’t notice the time or I have poor time management skills. Probably a bit of both.

Today we were working on creating an infographic which until today I’d never heard of. But it required that we reflected/assess and self evaluate where we are. This is a key part of our job as teachers in assessing, reflecting, and evaluating ourselves; hence why it is one of the NC standards. We have to be able to do this and see where we can improve as teachers; to get students engaged in the learning process, enhance and transform learning, establishing relevancy, and integrating literacy. Just listing all of these things that we have to consider is stressing me out. I can’t help but feel that there is this almost “your best will never be enough” feeling that makes me a little depressed and stressed in constantly trying to do better knowing you will have to be doing this regularly. Where you think “yes, this time I’ve finally done it. There’s nothing more to improve on.” but it never is and we have to continually look for ways to improve. It is like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the mountain.

It's not the improving thing that stresses me out but it the feeling of trying to get students engaged in the learning process, enhance and transform learning, establish relevancy, while also planning lessons (most likely for several subjects), creating tests, coming up with projects, deal with the principal and angry parents, jungle your own personal life, and fight the urge to just take the easy way out and lecture. I guess it’s the trying to get everything right even though you never will that is getting me.

So Close Yet So Far Away

I don’t know about the rest of you but I feel like this semester has really started to fly by with the snow break and one week of classes cancelled. I feel like I should be farther along in the learning process but I’m not. I don’t know how to explain it.
    Well anyways, I got to observe my clinical experience placement’s class and it was slightly different than I thought it would be. The day I came to observe was the day when only twenty five or so minutes was spent teaching the rest of the time the students were quietly working on an in class project. So I didn’t get to observe a whole lot about what to expect when I have to teach a lesson. The good news was that it gave me almost an hour to ask the teacher a bunch of questions about her class. Then I learned that I may be in way deeper than I originally thought. My teacher teaches four other subjects and depending on what day and time I choose I may be teaching anything from US government, world history, US history, to AP Euro. If this project didn’t count for as much as it does this wouldn’t worry me at all because I’m pretty well grounded in each area. Either way this will definitely prove to be interesting.
    Despite this, I think this will prove to be an interesting lesson seeing as if/when I get a job teaching I will mostly likely have to teach three or four different subjects. I’m a little nervous and a bit excited, kinda strange but that's the best way I can put it. I am looking forward to having to give a lesson to our class though. I spent a lot of time working on this one and I looked back on my last experience in 250 and took all that I had learned into consideration. Having to keep a blog like we did in 250 was very beneficial so I could read my own thoughts from back then. Not joking, these blogs really do come in handy when going back over what we’ve covered in the semester or in my case last semester. So word from the wise, put some effort into these blogs trust me it comes in handy later.
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