2 posts tagged “self-selected”

I haven't had a teacher-guilt spaz attack in 5 days.  I'm really surprised. Well, not surprised exactly..  Maybe encouraged?  I at least know that it's possible to do this without having meltdowns every five seconds, which is a good thing.  Anyhow, on to the main point.

My lesson on Friday worked really well.  It was amazing/exhilarating/uplifting.  I had fun, they laughed at me, I laughed at me, they actually GOT some of the stuff I was trying to teach them.  They made connections.  They paid attention (for the most part, at least) during the 100 minute block- this would be no mean feat for me, so it's really exciting that they were able to. 

As I've learned lately, I have a problem with time management, especially with literature.  The 'preteach vocab' commandment dragged me down for a while, but I feel like I'm starting to get past it.  On Friday, I quickly defined unfamiliar words FOR rather than WITH them, and we got through what we needed to.  I didn't try to dive right into the poem, which wasn't overly complicated (unlike my last one, which I thought was simple but actually was not), instead having them recap what was happening (with a little nudging).  We identified some literary/stylistic devices, and that was that.  I moved right along with my schedule for the class, pretty much seamlessly.  I ran short a few places and long in a few others, so it worked out well.  I didn't get bogged down (very proud of myself here). 

I had hit absolute rock bottom on Monday.  It was awful.  It was painful.  It was boring.  I seriously almost cried.  They could barely keep their eyes open (one or two couldn't).  Throughout the week, I've been slowly, slowly improving, and I was so so so excited when Friday worked.  So, some days are awful, some days are good.  I'm going to try my best from here on out to minimize the awful ones.  Timing.  Literary material.  I feel like I'm climbing over my obstacles here.  And the kids are having an ok time, at least.  I'm going to work on not boring them out of their skulls. 

so the last assignment for the kids in my summer school class was to write a paragraph about each of their teachers- what we taught them, how they felt about us, etc.  a few of the kids got a bit mixed up on who taught them what, which is completely understandable, i think, considering how much material we had to fit into a three week span.  one of my comments (i can't remember the exact wording) was something like "she's a pretty mellow teacher."  mellow.  i can handle that, i guess.  now that i'm actually thinking about it, it's kind of starting to bother me.  does this mean that i'm not hardcore enough about the boring-but-important stuff like homework?  or is it just a kid coming up with another word for calm?  which would make sense, as i think every evaluation i got described me as calm.  ok. i'm going to keep myself from dissecting the various connotations of "mellow" by watching my taped lesson.  wish me luck!