My Third and Final Teaching Experience

UPDATE:
After a couple days of cooling off after giving my lesson, I do feel a bit better. Kind words from my peers and adviser encouraged me to continue. The whole idea of teaching in real life is terrifying and I let my immediate emotions get the best of me when I wrote my original post. I am still unsure if this is where I should be and where I fit in life but I do feel better. Continuous research and interviews with other students will help me cope with my wave of emotions.
I'm sorry if I worried anyone with my original blog.

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I suppose I should start with what I thought went well. I feel like my PowerPoint was really great minus all the words- I had meant to tell my students they did not need to write everything down but I forgot. As always, my dress was professional and I would have been able to wear what I did in a real classroom. I am also very proud of my handouts, except for the directions on the front of the homework; otherwise, though, I feel like they were really good. Although I was very nervous, I think my delivery was good, too. I spoke strongly for the most part, and I called out two of my students for giggling during a quiet work time. a\As for my lesson plan, I liked my bell-ringer and I thought it was a nice touch to have the students write on the board after the partner work.

The list of what I felt went wrong is much longer. There is a note on one of my peer review sheets that says that that particular student did not like the lesson at all and felt that it was completely unengaging… I also have many notes saying that the PowerPoint was too much and that my directions were confusing during the entire lesson. Because I was nervous and spoke too quickly, I had five whole minutes left after my lesson and did not know what to do with the extra time. I could have more effectively used my time and I feel bad that I didn’t. For the homework, I told my students they could do a fanfiction and not all of them knew what it was and this was a huge mistake on my part—just because the people I hang out with on a regular basis would understand what a fanfiction does not mean that my students would understand. Apparently my transitions were lousy too, as each of my peer review sheets mention this as something that I need to work on. I also picked up on this; I thought that I had practiced enough but when push comes to shove, my nervousness took over my mind and my mouth only spoke uselessness. My exit ticket was to answer the Lesson Essential Question and many students had trouble with this because I did not specifically address the answer to the question in my lesson. I feel bad that they had trouble with this because that means they were not able to learn from my lesson… which is the point of giving a lesson…

If I could go back and change what I had done before, I would change everything but the short stories that I had picked out for the lesson and homework. I really feel as if this lesson was a bust and I am disappointed in how I performed it.

And I am not certain if the way I am feeling has to do with how my lesson went or if I am honestly just not passionate about teaching like I thought I would be but I feel like I don’t belong in the classroom. I don’t fit in and I’m not passionate about it and it’s really upsetting that I’ve taken so many classes to correspond with this major to find out, after it’s too late to declare something different, that teaching is not what I want to do for the rest of my life. I am not as good at it as I thought I might be, and though I have learned a lot in my ELA 290 course, I am concerned that I will never be good enough to fully enjoy the profession.

I guess I’ll just see how the rest of my degree goes…

My Second Teaching Experience

There was not much about my second lesson that I felt went well, but I did enjoy the concept of the “Comma Hunt.” I had imagined that it would go well because it was planned to boost student morale and show them that they already know comma rules without being formally taught. In practice, however, it did not go well. This is, I think, because the instructions were too vague and we did not provide written direction for the students. Just another example of how plans in the classroom will never go exactly as planned. In the peer review sheets, many of my “students” also mentioned that the comma hunt was was hard to follow. In addition to this, I did not type in the student examples of commas into the PowerPoint like I had planned. And I believe this would have been monumentally increased my lesson effectiveness.

I believe my co-teacher did well with this lesson as she seemed prepared to teach not only her designated parts of the lesson, but all of it, and could improvise when I was unable to find the right words. If I could re-do this lesson, I would make sure that I practiced more and wrote out more discussion questions on my notecards so that I could have been an effective teacher and partner. Some of the students picked up on this as well. In the peer review sheets, several people mentioned that I should have spoken up more, instead of standing in front of class silently, in order to make the lesson more effective. I am embarrassed that I let this happen, as I should have been more assertive in order to get my voice heard. This is something I will be better aware of in my next teaching experience: have a more assertive authority in the classroom.

This lesson definitely decreased my self-esteem as a teacher and I will need to work to get it back up with my next lesson. I will need to become more sure of myself and confident in order to be a good educator. I have always considered myself a good public speaker and have been complimented on my preparedness and calm in the past, so this experience did not feel very pleasant. It is my intention to be undoubtably better in my final lesson.

Teaching the Beauty of Grammar

As far as my fears and anxieties about grammar go, I’m just worried that I won’t catch a mistake that I make. I hate when I am reading over something online (an article or a social media post or anything else) and I find an obvious error. Someone should have been able to notice that before they put it online, right? Wrong! It happens all the time. I have been dubbed a “Grammar Nazi” by my friends and family and although I dislike that term, I suppose they aren’t incorrect; I have eased back a bit since high school though, so there’s that at least. I am a bit concerned about how I might teach grammar. Growing up, all my teachers did basically the same thing to teach grammar. They would give worksheets and/or they would write a sentence on the board and have the class dissect and correct it. These methods were effective but they weren’t much fun. I want to be a fun teacher, but I don’t know how else to teach something as boring to students as grammar. I’ll just hang out at the drawing board until I can come up with something neat, I guess.

After reviewing our text, I really like the way that Anderson views grammar and all the teachings of it. I respect his thinking in the sense that as long as students are building on what they know, they will eventually succeed. He also believed that grammar and mechanics should be a door to exploration and creativity instead of correction and disappointment. He gave examples how students would put an apostrophe with the possessive “it” because they are supposed to put an apostrophe with other possessive pronouns. His scaffolding techniques make sense because now he would know that he needs to review when to have the apostrophe. I really liked how he never said he thought the students were dumb just because they made mistakes. He just used the opportunity to reteach something so that his students can be the best they can be.

Quotes and discussion:

“Pseudo-concepts are stepping stones along the way to concept development.” Page 4

I really loved this quote because I felt that it was true—and some teachers forget about it. In my experience, I find that some teachers think that if a student does something wrong, then they are just wrong and don’t understand the concepts at all. All teachers should educate by the method that some or little understanding doesn’t mean all hope is lost—they have something to work with now. If students are willing to make connections to help them succeed, then that should be encouraged.

“No matter how well-intentioned, if I deluge my students with too much of anything, they will remember nothing—especially rules and exceptions to those rules.” Page 6

                This is so important! Students are constantly being bombarded with information all day long and are expected to remember each and every thing. It is even harder in an English class—we have so many rules to follow…and then so many exceptions to those rules. It is vital that we, as teachers, pace the information we relay to our students. As a college student, I feel burnt out. I have so much going on and things to do and worry about, with so much information to take in all in a day, even though I know all these study tools and tips for success, I feel the pressure coming down on me. Middle and high school students feel the same way—but sometimes worse because they have not had the time or experience to develop the same strategies that I have.

“With what we know about the brain absorbing information visually, is it a sane educational strategy to have students stare at something so wrong for the first ten minutes of class every day?” Page 16

                I chose to focus in on this quote because it is exactly how I was brought up learning grammar. It is NOT what I want to do when I am in charge of my own class. I’m still waiting to come up with a good idea of my own, but so far, nothing.

Sentence Stalking:

“A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”

                -A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin          

“The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud; to be above his company, and above being Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend.”

                -Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

“Before Fortunato could guess what was happening, I closed the lock and chained him tightly to the wall.”

                -Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe

“It is not now as it hath been of yore;--/ Turn whaeresoe’er I may,/ By night or day,/ The things which I have seen I now can see no more.”

                -Ode by William Wordsworth

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

                -Hamlet by William Shakespeare