Gosh...where to start with this week, so much has happened. Starting last Friday, I took over 5th hour BC Calculus and I have been teaching it ever since! I would watch Julie teach calculus 1st hour to get a sense of how she would teach the subject and then adjust my teaching plan if needed. This week I had the WORST teaching experience of my life but I also had the BEST teaching experience of my life.
Part A:
Let's start with the bad. On Wednesday I had planned to teach the average value of a function to BC calculus students. I had tutored the concepts before to college students, so I understood the content. That morning Julie had decided she wanted to teach average value with more real-life example problems, so she did a little research and she comes up with really good graph problems for students to understand how the concept was used in the real world. She explains her plan to me on how she was going to teach the content and then I watch her teach her 1st hour period to see how she would teach it. Julie does a great job and the students get it. Fifth hour comes along, and it was my turn to teach the lesson and everything goes wrong. As I was teaching, I was trying to remember how Julie explained to me how the real-life problem related to finding average value. In other words, I was to figure out how to solve the problem while I was teaching the concept. Also, I was so nervous that I kept making small mistakes in my arithmetic which was so frustrating because I would have to go back and fix it and then recalculate. Eventually, I had to ask Julie for help to explain to the students how to do the problem. That day I felt like a complete failure because not only did I not know how to do the math but I wasted my students' time, and that for me was the worst feeling in the world.
On to the good. I don't usually teach Julie's 2nd period (i.e., AEGIS) but they were scheduled to learned L'hospital this week so I offered to teach for that day. I had already taught that lesson before to the BC calculus class during my level 3 observation so I knew the content. When I taught it last semester, I did okay but I remember having trouble using the Mobi because I had just learned how to use it. This week, when I taught the lesson, it went better than I had planned. The lesson started out with me reviewing with them how to take limits because it had been a while since they had done limits. Next, I went over how to use L'Hospital Rule. Then as a class, we reworked the limit problems from before but instead using L'hospital Rule. As we found the limit of each function I would have students discuss which strategy they preferred to use (e.g., L'hospital Rule, factoring, multiplying by conjugate, graphing, and tables) and have them explain their reasoning. Since there was a small amount of time left of class, as a class we worked together to prove why L'Hopital Rule works and most of the students didn't seem to mind we were doing proof--some of them seemed to really appreciate the proof.
When I compared average value lesson with my L'Hospital lesson, I realized the mistake that I made was taking some else's lesson without fully comprehending how I was going to teaching it. I don't feel comfortable trying to teach a lesson just like someone else because it takes so much energy to remember what that teacher did. From now on, I will just take a few ideas that I really like and make it my own. I have also learned that teaching is this never ending roller coaster ride. Sometimes the lesson goes well and sometimes it blows up in your face, but it's all about learning from your mistakes and refining your craft.
Part B:
This week I have been getting used to teaching a regular class period and preparing content for each day's lesson. The day before each lesson, I always make sure I look over all the students' assignments/homework for that lesson and then I make an outline of what concepts I want to cover and what problems I think are good examples to do. Most importantly, I always make sure I go over my lesson plan with Julie in the morning to get a second opinion. As I watch Julie teach 1st period, I will usually add little things to my lesson plans that Julie does that I think might help explain a concept better. My skills in planning instructions have improved a lot since I have started. I think this is really because I forced myself to get out of my comfort zone by taking on an entire class period, and because I did that I wanted to be prepared for class every day because when I am in front of the classroom teaching that's when I feel the most vulnerable--so preparation is essential!
Part C:
The first time that I taught 5th hour I noticed that my teaching was not much different than how I tutor small groups which is not a very effective way of teaching and I need to change this. I would talk a few minutes about the concepts and then I would do 3 to 4 example problems with the students on the board, then have students work on the rest of the problems on their own. I have been tutoring math for over five years and transitioning from a tutor to a teacher is hard, but I knew that I needed to take that next step which is the reason why I jumped into teaching a classroom so early in my internship. I am too comfortable tutoring students and have no problems working with individuals or small groups, but if I want to become a teacher then I know it's time that I really push myself to teach an entire classroom. The first days teaching 5th hour, I remember being really nervous I think this is because I hadn't really gotten a chance to know the students yet. I notice such a difference in my teaching when I teach 5th hour vs. 1st hour (which was the classroom that I observed last semester). When I jump into 1st hour I feel super comfortable with the students and I know all their names, so when I am teaching them I rarely feel nervous at all. For me, it's a lot easier to stand in front of a classroom of students & teach when you know your students.
One of the things that I have found helps me get to know my students and also learn their names quicker, is to grade their papers. Weird, I know. Like I had one student who has gigantic handwriting and he wrote a message on his exam which said "There is not enough room to write on here"; which I wrote back "Feel free to ask for more paper! (smiley face)". Grading papers also helps me see which students are struggling in the classroom or what are some common mistakes that I need to address when I teach. For next week, I will focus my goal on working on "Assessment". These next couple of days, Julie and I are grading exams for several of our classes because a lot of them either have just taken their exams or are about to. I think this opportunity will give me more of an idea of how I should set up my assessment when I create my unit plan.
Until next time!
I really appreciate reading your post this week - especially the challenges of shifting lesson plans/making mistakes but also being a bit nervous with new students. :) This is sometimes tough for us to share with others but it happens to everyone and reminds us to ask for help.
ReplyDeleteHow have you addressed the internship checklist this week?
1) Peruse school website: I have access to Julie's school login. Sometimes I take attendance and input grades for Julie, and now I can do it from my own laptop!
Delete2) Put an exercise/hobby schedule in place: I'm the type of person who has to workout at least 3-4 times a week or else my heart rate is more prone to go up throughout the day which could lead to stress or anxiety. I usually go to bed at 9 or 10pm so that I can wake up at 4:30am to workout for an 45mins to an hour. I've gotten really use to this schedule and really like it because it really nice to go to an empty gym in the morning.I find it peaceful, and now I always look forward to waking up because I find going to the gym really therapeutic. Also, when I'm on the elliptical I will usually watch youtube videos of math content to find inspiration that I could use in class. (Killin two birds with one stone)
3) Meet an English teacher: Julie is the AEGIS math teacher who also at times collaborates with the AEGIS english teacher. I had the opportunity to sit with Julie and the English teacher and hear about ways they are going to recruit more students into the AEGIS courses.
I'd love to hear more about why you are choosing to focus on assessment. What about assessment are you wanting to work on? How to create assessments? How to align them with your nstruction? How to evaluate them? The purposes? What are your thoughts and concerns, and how will you address them?
ReplyDeleteI chose to focus on assessment this week because next week (or the Monday after) I will be giving out my pre-assessment to my students for my teaching unit. One of the things I am working on is making sure the pre-assessment and final assessment align with each other and with the instruction.
DeleteIn addition, I am want to incorporate formative assessment such as exit tickets. Not only does it give me insights on where my students are at, but I think this would be a great way to encourage mastery learning because it allows students to become more self-aware of their own learning. I'm still working on what questions are going to be most helpful to put on these exit tickets.
Thank you for sharing your "bad" experience this week, Jenn! It made me feel a lot better knowing that I wasn't alone in struggling this week. :)
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned that your way of teaching with tutoring small groups isn't effective when teaching to the whole class. What do you mean by this? What do you hope to do when teaching all of the students that will be more effective?
The beauty of being a tutor is that often times you are not teaching from scratch, because the teacher has already taught it but the student might not have fully understood the lesson. Typically when I tutor, I usually state the definition or theorem that I am teaching to make sure students are aware of them and then do some example problems. If I were to do this strategy as the main teacher, the learning for the students would be very shallow also students are more likely to check out and become bored. I don't exactly have the answer to your question because I am still working on them myself, but these are some tips that have been working for me:
Delete1) Incorporate ideas and concepts from the previous lesson or common mistakes you find on tests & exams to the new lesson. I did this when I was teaching l'hopitals and its was very effective way to remind my students how limits work.
2) Try not to stand in the front of the board all the time. I have a mobi to write on so I walk back and forth in the classroom so that I can see my students better.
3) Take some time of your day to look up cools stuff about math concepts you might be teaching. When I working out in the morning, I watch numberphile or youtube videos about applications of mathematics. That's how I got the idea about bubbles when I taught hyperbolic functions, which I can share with you if you want. My students really enjoyed it and I loved teaching it.
You're post is amazingly real and thank you so much for sharing the bad and the good! I'm definitely in the same boat with trying to teach the students but i seem to be losing a lot of the students. You've opened my eyes to the reason for this problem in that I'm trying to teach just like my cooperating teacher would. And while I like my cooperating teacher, I'm not her and I need to teach the way I would want to. I was just wondering how you go about planning for each day your teaching, but still using Julie's notes and examples. Do you change a lot of things, or is it more just planning how you would best teach the material given?
ReplyDeleteFor now, my lessons are similar to Julie's because I'm mainly reusing her content (this probably won't be the case when I teach my unit). There have been a few times where I will add small activities to show real life examples of math concepts or sometimes I will use something from Geogebra to spicy things up. My lesson plans usually covers the same material as Julie (e.g., do the same examples, show which methods to use, etc.) but I might add something extra to make it more engaging for the students and/or to make a deeper connection to the mathematics. I don't do this all the time because it's not always practical.
Delete