After receiving the ‘First Year Teacher of the Week’ for the first week of summer school, I must admit I was feeling pretty good about my teaching skills. Not that I was filled with a ton of pride or anything but I did feel like I had a solid grasp on teaching and all my teachers were learning. I even figured that all teaching would be easy and I could start cutting corners and even spend less time planning.
The following Monday and Tuesday of the second week were lousy and I skyrocketed back to Earth. Even though those days of lessons were lousy I learned so much and looked at my own teaching much more critically. Along with the help from fellow teachers and especially my team teacher, I picked out areas to focus on and improve the effectiveness of my teaching. It was also the time when I filmed myself teaching. My initial reaction – how did I win first year teacher of the week? Sure, my classroom was well managed but I look like I have a hip glued to the board and I rarely look to the right side of the class. In addition when I write I have my almost entire back facing the class. What a great tool the video camera is. It was definitely humbling.
Despite the many problems there are a few key positives. The first is the classroom management aspect of the group. Don’t get me wrong, the classroom is unusually docile but at the same time a quiet respectful classroom is a quiet respectful classroom. In addition I felt as though everyone was engaged. Whether they were just staring at me or taking feverish notes may be up for debate but throughout the 50-minute class everyone answered questions and was working.
Overall I came away with some great points to work on. First and foremost – I need to move around the room more. Although I’ve received A’s on all my formal evaluations I consistently am not doing well when it comes to moving around the classroom. In addition I’ll need to do a better job writing on the board more while looking at students. Not to downplay those things but if those are my biggest things I need to work on I’ll be satisfied. My team teacher knows that those are weaker areas of my lessons and I just need to consciously work on them each day. I’m very curious to see how the next videotaping session goes. I make a conscious effort to improve every day and feel like my hard work will pay off. I guess it wasn’t too scary after all…..
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