Always a Student

A good teacher is one who never stops being a student.

There is so much to know. SO much! I wish I had a 1,000 lifetimes to study and experience all there is.

As a teacher, I will never stop learning.

The Frustrated Student

Today I realized how easy it is to become a frustrated student. I have a class, Portuguese, where the professor speaks only in Portuguese. For a foreign language class this is a very good practice; normally I am very engaged if not excited by the challenge of understanding the professor.

Today; however, I was not engaged. Instead, I was frustrated by not understanding what was going on around me. I did not understand what was expected of me. I heard something about a test, something else about an essay, and several random dates that I did not fully understand.

Someone might ask, "well, why didn't you ask the professor for clarification?"

A valid question, but to a frustrated student not. A frustrated student does not want to ask a teacher to repeat something they've already said two, three, or more, times, something the rest of the class understands, something he or she should understand.

A frustrated student will simply sit, like I did, frustrated and unknowing. When I realized this I realized several things about being a teacher.
1) I must watch out for frustrated students in order to help them.
2) I must make sure that I can organize and present information in such a way that it is clear and easily understandable to all students (especially if there is a language or culture barrier involved).
3) I must avoid expressing impatience with students.
4) I must never tell students, "I am only going to say this once..."
5) I must always remember this experience so that I might always remember the lesson learned.

Which Grade?

For as long as I have wanted to be a teacher (since about sophomore or junior year of high school), I have wanted to teach at the High School level or above. Today though I worked with two young children of about 4 and 9 years old and they may have changed my perspective.

They're two adorable Spanish children whose mother wants them to practice their English with a native speaker. We spent our hour (which turned into an hour and a half) drawing pictures, playing "I spy", and generally enjoying ourselves. These kids were attentive, excited, and motivated. They eagerly participated in games and even thought of other games to play.

I really enjoyed my time with these kids. After I left I was laughing and happy; It is amazing how just a short amount of time with kids can energize you. I'm already thinking up lots of "lessons" and activities to do with them. I've never been this excited to work with kids before. It is making me seriously consider teaching at the elementary level.

Hopefully this high energy excitement will continue if not increase.

Well, I've lessons to plan...

Teaching ESL

Colleagues,

I have not updated in a significant period of time because I am currently living abroad. Very exciting news, I know. I am spending a semester studying in Spain; it is quite a fantastic experience so far.

Recently, a woman who lives in my apartment building approached me. She said she had heard my flatmates and I speaking in English and asked if we were native speakers. I informed her that I was in fact a native speaker from the United States. She seemed thrilled at this. She then proceeded to ask me if I, or one of my flatmates, would be interested in practicing conversational English with she and her two children. I eagerly answered that I would be interested and we worked out the necessary details.

My first paid job as a teacher. Well, it is more of a tutorship but regardless it is my first paid job as something resembling an educator. Our first session is two days from now and I want to be well prepared. The woman already knows a bit of English and the lessons will be mostly refreshing for her, but I'm not sure of the level of her two sons.

As all good teacher's will tell you, planning is key. So I'm sitting down write now and thinking about how I would like to approach this. I think I'm going to first think of some preliminary questions to gauge the woman's goals for herself and her two sons, then I'm going to work backwards from there. I'll try and think of useful vocabulary topics, common idioms, and important verbs. Also, I'm going to try and include a bit of culture in our lessons. It might very from popular music and television, to current events in the newspapers.

I'm quite excited.

Wish me luck!

Sincerely,
The Optimistic Teacher

Clinical Teaching

I taught my second lesson today, I feel it went well overall.

I taught the lesson three times. Of course the first run through was the worst. I stumbled over my words, wasn't sure about the timing, didn't feel confident in my examples, etc. The lesson did significantly improve though as the day went on.

Reflective Teaching is at the heart of the education program I am in... and this journal is where I plan on reflecting so... here it goes.

Good Things:
-Good examples / non examples
-Good focusing activity at the beginning of class
-Good homework sheet, simple but effective.
-Good guided practice activity

Bad Things:
-Smoothness: I was getting there, and it improved as the day went on but there were still a few rough patches.
-Handwriting: It has got to improve for the kids to be able to read it.
-Not enough input in the target language
-2 of 3 classes finished 5-8 minutes early.

Goals:
-I need to remember to make things consistent and clear; remembering to breath will help I'm sure.
-Getting the students involved as possible in the process would help them learn more. Like today asking them to label the skeleton instead of me. Also, asking them to read the examples from the homework or the daily riddle.
-Improve handwriting
-Make lesson objective more clear for the students

Classroom Management:
I felt like I did a decent job. At one point, the students were in small groups which is always a bit louder than when working alone but the students enjoy it a bit more. Also, while the groups were writing on the board there was some chatter but I feel that's one of those battles you have to pick not to fight because really, they don't gain much from watching their classmates writing on the board.

I never realized how much energy teaching takes...

Lesson On Organization

I missed several excellent opportunities to blog about excellent teacher related experiences because I forgot the password to this blog... happily I re-discovered it today and will not forget it again! The lesson to be learned here... organization!

Clinicals - Day One

I entered Kirksville High School this morning at approximately 10 minutes until 8:00am. In my mind I was thinking thoughts of pedagogy, remembering movies like the Ron Clark Story or Freedom Writers, and generally having grandiose thoughts about my future as a teacher. When I walked into the school, I was greeted by a male student screeching like a dinosaur. A female student walked casually past him and with a casual tone that suggested this happened often said, "'Morning Rex"

When I arrived at the classroom where I was to observe and eventually teach, I met my mentor teacher. A puerto rican woman with a wonderful accent and a pleasant disposition. She clearly had experience as a mentor teacher and made me feel very comfortable in the classroom. She went about her daily work with the students and I observed for the majority of my time there. Occassionaly one of the students would raise his or her hand, "Mr. Campbell..." It was such an odd and exciting thing to hear myself being referred to as "Mr. Campbell"

I left the school at the end of the day feeling exhausted but excited for what is to come. Very excited.