Real Lessons and Real Students 4-11-08

“Huge improvement from last week!” That is what Mr. Snider wrote on the back of my evaluation. That comment defiantly put a smile on my face. I had once again gotten myself worked up and nervous about teaching. I was much more confident this time, however the thought of my cooperating teacher thinking my lesson was lame was eating at me. It was my first time teaching a real lesson to real students, and I didn’t want to mess up.
I liked my lesson and was excited about teaching it. Awaiting my turn, I was not as nervous as last week. When it was my turn, the nerves left and I was ready to teach this lesson. The lesson went smoothly and the students seemed to be enjoying the activity I had planned. I made a dice box to use for the activity. I only wanted to number it 1-4, and a rectangular box inconviently has 6 sides. I ended up just making the two ends black and numbering the larger surfaces. I practiced the night before rolling the box so that it only landed on a numbered surface, after about 15 attempts of successful rolling I was confident that it would be just fine to use in class. During the lesson I rolled the dice about 5 or 6 times. On the last time, the box landed on the black, un-numbered surface. Great, what am I supposed to do now? I picked up the dice and told the students that I would roll it again. Well, much to my surprise the dice landed on the black surface again. I then told the class if it landed on black one more time, then everybody would get to give a huge cheer. Not attempting to roll a black, I did. The kids loved it! Something I dreaded happened, and it turned out for the best. The rest of the lesson went just fine, and I could finally breathe again.
I felt pretty good with my class. But now, it was time to find out what Mr. Snider thought about it. Thankfully, he said it was great and that I made a huge improvement from the previous week. The other comment he made was that I have a unique voice, and I use it well. He said that I have a voice we don’t hear everyday, and that is a good thing. Unique voice? The only thing I could think of was that I have an annoying voice and the students pay attention just so they don’t have to hear me repeat myself. Hopefully, that is not the case. Once again I am probably just freaking out for no reason. I am just going to tell myself that Mr. Snider wouldn’t lie, so if he said it was good, then it was good.
In the afternoon I taught the same class of first graders that I taught last week. This week went much better. I did much better waiting on them to shut up and listen to me. Last week, it was so hard to just wait. I wanted to just hurry up, give directions, and get the students moving as fast as I possibly could. I felt uncomfortable that they were not all being quiet and sitting still, so I just talked over them and got things moving. Today I was completely content with standing there looking at them until they were ready to listen.
I am excited about my next teaching assignment and my passion is continuing to grow.