Back to work I go
Today I felt good going to work. I had everything going well from the time I left my house and even till I walked into class. Things were just looking good for me and that’s how I wanted it to be.
The first class 3rd period went well for me, but not really for the class. 9th grade Yuri had a class today about eating habits. They were stuck on the easiest things and I think it was just because they were just pulling our strings. They really understood, but pretended not to. That’s the tough part about this class. They weren’t listening to CP at all and she even needed to yell a few times. But the students responded well to me when I talked to them on a personal level. I worked with the students individually and walked them through it so that they could understand, and I think that made all the difference with them. I think that CP saw that too because all the students wouldn’t care what she would say, but when I approached it differently they responded well. But they still didn’t finish their papers and didn’t even get close to half finished. They spent 50 minutes on something that should have taken 5. That was a bit of struggle in the first class though.
The second class was where I learned that my plans don’t always go according to plan. I think that part of the problem is that I rely too much on the other teachers in the room for help, when I should just run the show and just do it by myself. I already do anyways, but I always want to get the other teachers involved too, but I probably shouldn’t because it chops up the process. With the 11th grade ran class today, the plan was to listen to some music (The Beatles – A hard days night) and (Aerosmith – Angel) and listen to write down some of the words that they heard. The first song is rather short and the words I choose were rather easy, at least that’s what I thought. It turned out to be quite a challenge that some of the students gave up. I think that was my mistake. I overestimated their ability and I think that discouraged them. Once that happened, I lost control of the class because they got all chatty again. I have never been able to get their attention with it and they always seem to chat. I know that’s a bad thing and a sign that my teaching ability needs work. We never really finished it and only got through correcting one song. So I will need to get to the other song and then worksheet next week.
The 7th grade yuri had to do the animals and where they come from. Today was the first time that I’ve seen the answers to this. It was fairly interesting. I laughed in class today, but I probably shouldn’t have. I tried to play it off, but I don’t think that I did a good job of it. I know I shouldn’t have, but then I didn’t think it would be taken the wrong way. I don’t think that it was, but it could have been.
