Saving my clown outfit from eighth grade Halloween turned out to be worthwhile after all. My mom insisted that it would come in handy one day, and time and again, she was right. Our theme for Lab 4 was "Circus" and I know I don't have any issues with being a clown sometimes. I put on a full-fledged clown outfit from head to toe and my hair was in pig-tails. Everyone who saw me chuckled and I had a blast being goofy with the kids.
I have really enjoyed my experiences at Saint Mary's so far, but there have definitely been areas that I know I need to work on personally and within a group. One challenge that made me nervous, and still makes me a little nervous, is teaching in front of other teachers. Sometimes I am afraid that I am not explaining my point across clearly and I sound dumb. I am too critical of myself and I have been learning that no body judges me as harshly as I judge myself. There are times when I feel like I am really on my game with teaching and relating with the kids and then there are other times where it's difficult for me to feel like I am being effective. This is something that I have struggled with in other areas as well and I guess I am just learning as I go not to be so hard on myself. I really want to be a teacher that isn't concerned with how I am teaching in relation with anyone else, but I want to be confident in myself.
Another area of difficulty that I have come across would be preparation. Lab 4 was a struggle for our group because we didn't even fully understand the point of the game we were doing with the kids. We felt like the age group was too young for the difficulty of the game, but we went with it anyways. The kids had no idea what was going on, but they still attempted the game and it looked like they were having fun. We can't go into another lab without being comfortable with what we are teaching and if we don't think the activity is effective we need to come up with a variation that we can all agree on. Also, during lab 4 my group didn't have enough activities to fill up our time slot. That's not a good feeling and it showed that we didn't put enough time into our activity. Hopefully next week will be a 180 for our group.
I have loved getting to know the kids at Saint Mary's and I am so grateful that our Professor runs our labs like this, because we are able to gain so much experience. One thing that we did in class was work on the loudness and tone of our voices and also our facial expressions. I thought that I was pretty expressive, but after looking at all the pictures our Professor takes of us during each lab, I wasn't smiling in a lot of them. I look a little too intense I think and I know I need to smile more. I want to work on being a lot more expressive and smiling. :)
Amy-
ReplyDeleteYou make some good points in this post. It may seem 'easier said than done' with being confident with your teaching ability, but that will come with time and experience. Once you get used to working with kids more, you'll be more confident and you'll also be more relaxed and be able to even smile more often.
As far as not being prepared goes: Noticing that an activity isn't working with a certain group due to developmental level is going to happen in the future as you teach, regardless of how much you prepare. In those cases all you can do is change the activity to make it work with that group of students. For example having the older kids team up with the younger kids worked because it kept the little kids moving and working on the skills you wanted them to focus on.
Ask any teacher and they will admit that they've had times where activities they've wanted to do just don't work. With experience you'll be able to recognize that and know how to modify the activity so it does work.
-Andrew