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…