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…
