Week 6 . . . HALFWAY!
I am happy to report that I am alive and well and have almost made it to the end of my first placement. YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! It has been quite the two weeks since my last post so I’ll try to recap as much as I can.
Week 5 began with a frantic email to the wife of a former professor. She had very similar experiences when she was a student teacher and has been giving me some words of wisdom along the way. I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that my mentor (from here on in, I’ll be calling my mentor mentor #1 from now on as I will be changing mentor’s Thursday) has this habit of making me use old lesson plans because that English department all does the same thing and has done it that way for years and so on and so on. A couple of times I successfully snuck in some of my original ideas, but then I started getting jumped on whenever I brought up even the slightest change to the old lessons. So I was given the advice to just back down and not offer any modifications, and do exactly what I was told. Anyone who knows me knows this is not something I do easily. When I have an idea I know is good and is most effective, I don’t back down and will argue my point. On the flip side of that, I am also notorious for being obsessed with my grades. I did not want anything to affect my GPA. So if trying to be creative was going to get me bad comments, then I wouldn’t risk it. And so I pulled myself back even further and did exactly as I was told. Well, this system sort of developed where I would start the skeleton of a lesson plan and then on Friday, mentor #1 and I would get together and go over the skeleton I had, the old plans, and decide what I was to do for the week. It worked fairly well, until last week.
I was set to have my advisor observe me this past Tuesday. I knew the things she wanted me to work on (my timing and pacing of lessons) so I made sure to not pack the lesson with objectives that I would run the risk of not completing them all. Mentor #1 had approved my plans for the week and I thought I was set. Then, Monday after school, mentor #1 was reminded about this Power Point that had been made by another English teacher and that I now needed to work into my lesson. And it wasn’t just an easy slide-right-in lesson. It was the same elements that I wanted to cover, but in a completely different order. Then there were movies embedded that I needed to allow time for and so in short, I had to come home that night and completely re-do the day’s lesson that I was still being observed on. To make matters worse, mentor #1 never emailed my the Power Point so I had no idea how long the movies were, how many slides there were, nothing! Doesn’t go well for being sure you time and pace the lesson right does it? So another frantic email goes out, this time to my advisor, warning her of what she was in store for. The icing on the cake came during my post-lesson discussion with my advisor and mentor#1 - mentor #1 told me that I needed to be sure to preview all movies and rehearse Power Points so that I could fix my timing and pacing issues. WTF!!?!? Would be nice if I had the damn thing to do that!
I also need to add that the stress of this whole experience is beginning to affect my health. Without getting to personal, the stress has caused some not-to-pleasant changes internally so now I need to have a complete exam to be sure some major issues have not developed. I hate to place blame on any one thing or person, but that is the case this time. I love the kids; I get along great with the other teacher; the office ladies are great; and the administration is fine. The cause of my stress is traced back to one factor and I don’t think I need to mention it. But, looking at this positively, I know that I am fully capable of dealing with the major elements of teaching. I’m pretty sure that once I have my own room and class, I will be just fine.