Week Three

Monday was my first day actually teaching. I wasn't as nervous as I thought I'd be, I was only responsible for one class - Speech. I planned on spending a half hour of my eighty minutes doing fun "ice breakers"/introductions. I had the students go around saying their names and their favorite movie; after each student went I said something along the lines of "It's nice to meet you, [insert name here]." I found that this activity really helped me to get to know the students. I then had the students tell me the three people they would take with them on a deserted island. Finally, after warning students that everything had to be school appropriate or we couldn't continue to do fun activities like this, I had student come up with "Would you rather" questions that as a class we answered. Overall, I was pretty happy with this time. I feel that it helped me to get to know my students names - by the end of the period I had everyone's names down. Granted, 15 of my 32 students showed up - but still, I think it's impressive. We spent the rest of the hour going over the course syllabus and then a quotation activity that I made.

I had put together a hundred famous movie (mostly), book, and famous speech quotations. These quotations included quotes from "Gone With the Wind," "Pirates of the Carribbean," "Pride and Prejudice," "The Hangover," "Step Brothers," "Batman," etc. I then gave the students the rest of the period to first try to get as many as possible answered on their own and then in small groups. We ran out of time and Tuesday I let them use the computers to look up the rest of the quotes. Tuesday we also worked on a study guide for the chapter in the book. I was feeling pretty good about how my relationship with the students was going.

Wednesday, the first day I'd be teaching officially "full time" as I'd be responsible for two classes, Speech didn't go as well. The students were blantantly unresponsive to anything I threw at them. I tried discussing how class was going. I gave them the opportunity to vote on the order of nine speeches they would be responsible for giving. Finally, when I realized that no matter what I did they just weren't going to give me even a pity laugh or smile, I took them out in the hall and we played "electricity" followed by "the human knot." (I had disinfectant for hands.)

Finally, the students began to respond. I took them back into the classroom and was really excited about this second activity that I had planned. Each student was to find five famous movie quotations and write them down. Then, after breaking into teams of five, the students would read their quotes and the teams that identified the movie that the quote was from. The team that had the most answers would win a prize next Monday after the long break. I asked my CT (Cooperating Teacher) if I could bring in food before hand - and because I don't necessarily agree with giving students candy in the classroom, I have purchased a bag of apples and oranges.

This activity didn't go according to plan. First of all, they didn't follow the directions or the work sheet. So for many of the quotes they wrote down they couldn't identify the movie title, actor/actress, or character as hints for their fellow students. Some of the quotes I could help out with - being the movie buff that I am. When I could, I would give hints such as - "This movie stars Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom," or "This movie is based off a book series and is the first of four. The new movie will be released this weekend," etc. Also, the students weren't enjoying it - I could tell just by the look on their faces.

British Literature, my first day teaching, didn't go very well either. All seniors, these students didn't react to my attempts either. The students also hated my introduction/ice breaker ideas. Well, not all of them - the boys actually really enjoyed it. But  They stared at me and, unlike my speech class, continued to talk while I attempted to lead a class discussion. I am teaching "All Quiet on the Western Front," which I have yet to read yet (whoops!). So we spent the eighty minutes learning about the author Erich Remarque and the novel. Because I have to show that learning takes place, I administered both a pre and post test for both the author and novel. The students thought this is was absolutely ridiculous. But what could I do?

Finally, the dreaded vocabulary list. Students hate vocabulary. I hate vocabulary. "All Quiet on the Western Front" has 106 suggested vocabulary words. So, thinking I'm clever, doing them a favor, and saving my own time grading, I thought it would be nice to have a vocabulary pretest. I told them it wasn't graded and that if 80% of the students got a word right, I would cross it off the list. The students absolutely hated this - but they did it because the fewer words the better. I'm not finished looking at all the words, I've probably got through 25. But of the 25, I was able to deleted eight words! So, while I don't think this was a complete waste of time, it's a lot of hard work and analysis.

To conclude - this week was...odd. People ask me how it went and I don't know what to say. One day was great, the next I struggled. It's spring break so I have today and tomorrow off. I plan on definitely re-evaluating my strategy and coming up with a variety of different lessons for next week. It was great sleeping in today. My body woke me up at 7am (odd, because when I DO have school I don't roll out of bed until 7:20) but I went back to bed and slept until 10am. I then woke up, took my time getting ready, bummed around my room listening to "The Devil Wears Prada" and am now getting ready to go to my SECOND interview! Wish me luck!