January 20, 2004
First day of Teaching
So today was my first day of student teaching. It was tough.
A few impressions right off the bat:
- lesson plans are invaluble - more than a few times, I would be finishing up a problem or activity, and wonder "oh, crap, what do I do now?" and the lesson plan would keep me going
- I don't think I was stern enough for a first day.. My 2nd class was quite a bit unruly, and a girl even came up to me afterwards and said that I shouldn't let people talk like that - out of turn, and so forth.
- knowing students names is vital.. my first class is huge, and I'm just learning everyone's name, so its very hard to get folk's attention when you only know a few names.
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My first class is Advanced Algebra, 2nd semester, also known as Advanced Algebra 2... the class has about 36 kids, and right off the bat we had about 9 new kids that I had never met before. At first I had them all standing to the side while everyone took their seats, then I realized there were more openings than new students, so I had them take any seat. I ran through my little introduction, which generally went ok.. people mostly sat down.
Two kids, Daniel and John, were both a little unruly - John is one of the higher performing kids in class, and Daniel is a bit of a wiseguy. Daniel and Kimberly spend a lot of time screwing around, so I might have to seperate them. Some of the other kids would talk. I knew Vanessa from before, and she was talking and not paying attention as she didn't before.
Posted by alecf at January 20, 2004 04:57 PM