Content Area Reflections - pt. 1

                  On September 11^th we had our first advanced methods class.  I remember that class because I was wiped out.  My lessons were barely keeping the kids attention and I felt like I was barely holding on in terms of classroom management.  Lesson planning didn’t take too long but it was mainly because I would figure out an easy way to teach the lesson and assign all sorts of independent practice.  This strategy isn’t awful but for a new teacher with mediocre discipline skills it is essential that the lessons to be engaging and hands on.  My lessons were certainly lacking and after the first content area meeting I vowed to make my lessons more like the out of the box ideas Dani showed us that afternoon.

                  Here we are a few days short of a month from that initial content area meeting and I feel as though I am in a much better place than I was back then.  Today I taught a lesson tying in one of my passions – Golf.  I created 9 ‘holes’ or topics that we’d review since our 1^st 9 weeks test is tomorrow.  I even brought in my golf clubs and some of other golf equipment to get the kids in the duffer mindset.  We would review each skills which was each hole, take a ‘practice swing’ (try a practice problem) and then play the ‘hole’ (3 – 5 problems to try on their own).  I also had a scorecard at the bottom and the winner won a Starburst.  Anyway I taught the lesson today and it was actually fun to teach.  Although this lesson took a few hours to prepare the payoff was more than worth it.  Putting more effort into each lesson and also being excited to teach the lessons as opposed to just ‘killing time’ or assigning busywork has been instrumental in my survival of the first 45 days.

                  Another huge help for my teaching has been the investment in a projector.  I spent the first 8 weeks of the school year writing the same notes all six periods.  With the projector now I can go through guided notes with only writing five or six words on the board each day.  In addition I don’t feel as though I am glued at the hip to the projector…another huge improvement in the classroom.  This helps with classroom management because I will typically plop myself in the middle of the misbehaving children while others take notes.

                  Overall I’d say that the general pattern in this entire blog is the fact that I am putting more time into the job.  At first I just wanted to leave school as early as possible and recharge my batteries as much as possible for the next day of abuse.   I am certainly not where I need to be as a teacher but being more creative and effectively implementing technology has helped me an incredible amount.