Well, I did it! I finished teaching for the semester. It was
trickier to squeeze in eight teaches with my CT’s schedule but substitute
teaching helped me catch up. Overall my last lesson went really well. As usual,
the girls at ARS were well mannered and actively participating in my lesson.
The lesson was about how to make good discussion questions and what makes some
questions better than others. It was a fun lesson to teach, the girls came to
class prepared to share three questions they wrote about the book they just
finished, The House of the Scorpion. I
was ready to talk a bit about what makes a question open ended or close ended
but the girls all seemed to have a really good grasp on what they are already.
A few of them even realized they had closed ended questions before they shared
with their friends and went about changing them before we even discussed them.
One thing Kelly mentioned after observing me that I thought
was interesting was that she noticed that at ARS I just jumped right in to the
heart of the lesson. While she’s never observed me before, she mentioned how at
Akins Christine would start a lesson with an anecdote to hook the students.
After talking with Kelly I realized I started all of my lessons at Akins with
an anecdote too. I would talk about my life or things I know the kids can
relate to make them perk up. When I started teaching at ARS I never used an
anecdote and I never see my CT using them either. There is a different
environment at ARS and it doesn’t call for anecdotes and the students don’t
quite need to be pushed to be as engaged as the kiddos I worked with last
semester. I just found it interesting that I made that sort of “code switch” on
my own without even realizing it. It probably has to do with watching the
different styles of my CT’s and pursuing their model of teaching. How important
is it to use anecdotes, or any other kind of entertaining tool to make sure our
students are engaged? I think it differs from class to class but there is a
fine line between engaging the kids and putting on a show.
When I taught in Thailand I felt like I was kind of a
sideshow act that would amuse the kids for an hour a week with games and word
searches. I think it made me feel more liked as a teacher but I eventually
started wondering how much they were learning. As a teacher I want to make sure
my kids are engaged and enjoying the lesson but the major concern can’t be that
the kids are entertained but that they are learning some thing valuable and
that they will use in the future. Anecdotes are a good way to go to relate to
your students and to reel them in at the start of a lesson but if that is
solely what you focus on and your lessons and activities become more about fun
than learning you’ve got to re-evaluate what you’re doing as a teacher.
On the other hand, though, if you take yourself too
seriously, and drone on when your students clearly don’t care, you have a whole
other problem…
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