Week 12: A Sigh of Relief

Vacation starts today at 2:15pm!  It's hard to tell who's more excited, the students or the teachers.  I, for one, have a plethora of reasons to be excited:

1. Tomorrow is my brother's wedding, sure to be a great time!
2. Last night at approximately 11pm I clicked submit on my final completed PPA standard (hopefully the revisions are few)
3. Vacation not only includes sleeping in, but also attending a Red Sox game (which will be fun regardless of their winning ability...)
4. There are only 2 weeks left of teaching after vacation and then my four years of undergrad comes to a close!

Image - www.cartoonstock.com

As my active, stress-inducing, paperwork driven portion of the semester comes to an end I have one plan in mind for my last two-weeks of teaching: Enjoy it!  No, I will not give easy assignments or sit back and let the students do as they please for the remainder.  I actually plan on giving a test on my second-to-last day.  Some would say this is crazy (because it likely means I'll still be correcting them after I'm supposed to be done) but I can't help but teach until my last possible moment.  This semester has helped me realize how much I truly do love teaching.  There is nothing more satisfying to me than knowing I can wake up at 5am and start my day with a coffee and go and shape the growing minds of young-adults and make them more aware of the world around them and how it came to be.  Without the dark cloud of licensure paperwork hanging over my head, I can completely concentrate my efforts on effective teaching for the last 10 days.

Happy vacation to those of you who have one!

-MB

Week 11: Excitement and Anticipation

This might go down as my high point as far as my mental and emotional status at any point this semester (and not just because the week ended on a Thursday).  All week there has been this energy, this excitement that I've finally figured out who I want to be as a teacher.  No I don't have all of the answers, nor do I think my current teaching mindset will necessarily survive a few years into my career.  But right now, I know what makes me comfortable in front of a class and how I can use my personality to engage my students in the topic at hand.


I realized a couple of weeks ago when a few of my students in different classes asked if I was angry that I wasn't exhibiting my enjoyment for teaching to the degree that the students were feeding off my energy.  A dry sense of humor is great, but it needs to be balanced with some positive and high energy moments.


The first of these occurred yesterday while talking about Sir Isaac Newton.  Science has always fascinated me on the surface, but I've never truly enjoyed delving into the complexities surrounding any topic other than space.  I credit a lot of this passion for space to my eldest brother who just so happens to be a rocket scientist (no, seriously, he has a degree in aerospace engineering).  While describing gravity to the class I mentioned the lack of gravity in space, for example on the International Space Station.  Turns out, over half the class had no idea what the ISS was!  *quick stretch* here we go! I proceeded to get quite animated and vocal in my explanation of the space program which sparked question after question! Fifteen minutes later it was time to get back to my lesson plan but it was exhilarating to be able to answer questions and truly engage the students in a subject.


Today, I used the same vocal presence and animation to lead a very intriguing conversation on a comparison between oil dependence on politics and herb/spices dependence on politics in the 1600s.  My students were a little taken aback by my excitement, but they were active participants in discussion and some of them became animated themselves!

Image - http://elearningr14.blogspot.com

This week has led to some serious anticipation of my future as an educator.  I cannot wait to get back into the teaching mode after this semester of student teaching comes to an end.  Hopefully, I don't have too much longer to wait before I can call a classroom my own and truly begin my career as a teacher.


-MB

Week 6: Get Out That Bag of Tricks

Anyone who has ever taken an education course has probably heard something like this; "make sure you keep this activity and use it when you're in a pinch, add it to your bag of tricks" or "add it to your toolkit" or "keep it in your back pocket."  As I get further along into my teaching experience I have had more opportunities to open this "bag of tricks."  

image - translorial.com

This week was a perfect example of that: Upon my arrival to school, I realized that my fantastic lesson on Renaissance artwork, which was entirely reliant on the use of very colorful and entertaining Renaissance artwork postcards, would have to be post-poned; I left the postcards at home!  My first reaction was utter panic - I had about 50 minutes to either re-work that lesson or scrap it and make up something else.  As I was really proud of my work on the original lesson, I decided to whip up something else instead.  So I did an introduction to some of the great Renaissance thinkers Francesco Petrarch and Leonardo da Vinci.  Now lecturing and having students take notes is straightforward, but the "bag-of-tricks" idea was pretty great.  As most historians know, Leonardo was famous for mirror-writing, or writing all of his letters and words backwards from right-left across a page.  So I demonstrated this for my students on the board (being left-handed myself I used to practice this when I was bored in class, I've developed a certain skill) and they were fascinated.  So I told them to try writing a sentence using this mirror-writing technique.  Then, as I knew would be the case with adolescent females, a few girls whipped out their mirrors and they were passed around the class so people could see how well they'd done.  A simple fun fact turned into a 10 minute activity that truly engaged the students in the subject matter - DEFINITELY keeping that in my bag of tricks.


While I usually try to keep my posts to one major topic, I just can't help but mention my first experience with  student assemblies. Today, each grade met during a different period to receive information about their course selections for next year.  Most teachers didn't remember this was occurring until yesterday afternoon, and most thought it would last the entire period.  


Fast forward to this morning, teachers find out that the assembly only lasts about 20 minutes and I am teaching a class in 15 minutes that I have NOTHING prepared for... (might I add this is only my 2nd time teaching this class)  Luckily, my cooperating teacher opened up her bag of tricks and saved the day. 


 So, I guess I really only had one topic, but I finally understand why my teachers in high school would get so frustrated and dread assembly days; not even a math teacher can formulate how to lesson plan for a class period that is lasting x amount of minutes starting at t time with a 50% margin of error...


-MB