So it is the block before I teach my lesson and I’m sitting in the English office listening to the song I am getting my kids to analyze and write on in an hour. It is week two, outside is covered in snow and I have been up since 5:45 am. I realize that, despite feeling like I have always been a part of the furniture of the school for ages, it has only been a week; this is only week 2.
Week one was rough around the edges if I’m to be honest. I feel like I went into this practicum with all these new ideas of how to engage students with technology and enthusiasm and the love of literature. I had dreams of engaged students with glittering eyes and brains. Boy, was I disillusioned. Right now, I am teaching a block of grade 11 English, at the end of the day, which means they just want to go home. I have two students with Aspergers and autism spectrum disorder (they are wonderful) and at least five ELL students. My classroom is a mixed bag of students and I am enjoying them immensely, now.
The first day was all about going over outlines and icebreakers and I jumped around a lot, spoke too fast, and narrated my entire train of thought out loud…or so I’m told by my wonderful SA, I think I get post-lesson amnesia because, for the life of me, I cannot remember what I did. My SA didn’t seem too worried.
My major turning point (as in downhill turning point) was day 2. It was the day I learned that lesson plans and technology can and will fail you. I thought I was just reviewing plot structure with my students and was met by blank stares and absolute silence. I could hear my heart beating. They looked at me with such blank stares and I could feel my lesson plan tanking. It was like when a luxury cruise ship loses power and just sits there, full of sweaty people with no AC and no working toilets or, possibly, when said cruise ship hits an iceberg and its engines flood with water and all you have is a bucket. But as I saw my lesson plan tanking, I tossed it out the window (metaphorically of course) and started bailing myself out. I noticed that we needed to spend more time with plot instead of moving onto theme so I improvised, turned a graphic organizer into an activity, and got them working. My SA tells me that by the end I had recovered nicely. I felt like a wreck. But I didn’t cry until I got home. And I didn’t throw up, so I count it as a win.
Day three I did a powerpoint that I found on the internet and got my students doing something. This is the day I learned that sometimes students don’t need exciting lessons chalked full of technology and excitement, sometimes they need work. And they were happy enough to quietly take notes from the powerpoint while I lectured about theme. Sometimes kids need boring.
Day four was fun because I scheduled our first class debate (it was on Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”). The kids got on their feet and got very into it. I asked them to decide wether or not the narrator should be found sane and guilty or not guilty because of insanity. Many of the kids are very into law and thrived. The prosecution was overly-confidant about their case because the narrator admits his guilt in the end of the story, but the defence shocked everyone with a very meticulous, thought-out, well-delivered argument (anchoring it back to the text and the short film I showed) and won the case, much to the vocalized disappointment of the other side. They left the class still arguing but my SA said that it was a good day because they left the class still talking about MY lesson. So I did something right there.
Day five (of a very LONG week) went well again. We watched two Pixar shorts and the class discussion was much easier than it was earlier that week. I think this was mainly due to the relationships I had been cultivating with the students (they’ve gotten to know me, I’ve gotten to know them) and the environment (I hope) of trust between us. I gave them time to think and discuss with each other before coming back as a group and I did not need to guide them through finding theme at all.
All in all, not a bad week (except Tuesday). Today will be interesting as we forgo a seating plan! Guess I’ll wait and see what happens. Stay tuned!
