Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Things I have learned in the past two days

1. The equipment is one of a teacher's biggest hurdles.
2. Standing next to the assignment board is the best way to get me (and the class) on task and focused at the beginning of the period.
3. How to force-quit a Mac.

Monday was my first day of apprentice teaching. I wasn't quite as nervous as I had feared, but I was still a little sweaty by the end of the period. My host teacher totally talked me up to the students ("She's from UCSD and already has her bachelor's degree in Biology. She's an excellent scientist and she's coming here so we can all help her to become a great teacher), so they've been fairly cooperative. It also really helps that she's there to rein them in when they get rowdy. My host teacher is really great and flexible about what I get to do in the class, offering me the maximum amount of freedom I can have and giving me plenty of feedback. Of course, that also means that I seem to ramble a bit, which is why she recommended I start the day near the assignment board (to give me focus). I also need to learn how to pull down a projector screen properly and how to troubleshoot Macs.

So far, I haven't had to do too much straight teaching, as we're just getting in to a new unit. They watched a video on Monday (Bill Nye rocks!) to introduce them to the subject (rocks and minerals) and today they did a web quest to learn more about minerals. Tomorrow we're going over a passage in class, so I'll actually be teaching for the whole period. It is a minimum day, though, so I still won't have done a whole period of teaching.

Oh, apparently 6th graders are too young to find 'cleavage' funny.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ack, my prac training was always terrifying.. I'm going to be the "host teacher" later this year for some uni students, determined to give them a good experience!

Have a great time with it!

Teacher Anonymous said...

Thanks! It's really been great so far. I really got a dream class and host teacher.