Good and Bad

This week has been better. We had the workshop day on Wednesday and it was interesting seeing that. We broke into departments to discuss the Maine Learning Results and what the goals for each grade level should be in relation to them. The Social Studies department consists of Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Simonea, and Mr. Henry and since they all have one of us as a student teacher they would have had double the input. However, they pretty much just chatted and said they were already meeting the standards. Then we went to the middle school to listen to the DEA about street drugs in Jay. Then Thursday I taught my first lesson in period 8 on Gettysburg and the Gettysburg Address. It went pretty badly actually, but in the ways I was expecting. I speak faster when I'm nervous and adding that to the fact that it was pulling teeth to get one word out of any student, the lesson was done much faster than I had planned. I tried to get them to do a current event, but it didn't really work. Today (Friday) I taught the same lesson to period 3 and it went fantastically. I was more relaxed, I have more of a connection with the kids in that class already, they were willing to speak at least a little so it wasn't just me talking the whole time. I did make one major change from yesterday in how I had them discuss the Address. Yesterday I did it whole class thinking I would walk them through it since it isn't an English class but none of them would talk even when called on. Today it was a bigger group to begin with and I had them break into their groups for the projects and discuss it in smaller groups. The groups that finished faster I told to start thinking about the presentation so they would be ahead for next class and I spent more time with the group that was not staying on task and having more trouble with the wording. It went much better than period 8 and a couple even called me by name, which is wonderful since being called "hey!" gets annoying after a bit. Anyway, the point of the week is that it's getting much better and I'm finally teaching. Unfortunately, the group you will be seeing is the period 8 group, but I'm thinking that on Monday I may get them to loosen up a bit, at least I'm going to try.