Video Lesson, Part One

Though it was quite some time ago, I remember having very distinct reactions to seeing myself teach the first time. It was, for one thing, really creepy. A part of me wasn't sure how to deal with the fact that I was holding a little version of myself in my hands and watching her run around a classroom. But after I got over that I thought it was so awesome. There I was, teaching. And the students were actually learning. AMAZING! I was excited to be teaching them, and got even more excited when my students seemed to grasp the concepts I was teaching to them or correctly answered a question. I felt like I was getting something done, doing my job, if you will...
There were definitely some aspects of my lesson that I didn't like, however. I thought I could have had the students up and out of their seats more. They were paying attention just fine sitting in their seats, but I felt that they probably could have benefited more from a lesson that had them directly interacting with the material they were learning.
But here's something that made my jaw drop: during the lesson I started dancing and made some excuse for it, made some kind of joke. I looked SO crazy. Just CRAZY. Now, I know I can be kind of "out there" sometimes, but just then I felt like I knew exatly what my students must have been thinking: "oh my gosh, my teacher is crazy, haha." I think that in the end, it'll be a good thing that my personality shines through in class. Maybe (hopefully) my craziness alone will make my students want to come to class, behave, do the work and learn Spanish. If I spend all of class dealing with classroom management I won't have time to really make class interesting. I hope my students will pick up on that one.
So overall, I thought it was a good lesson, but there's always some room for improvement. And although I looked really crazy, I liked it.

Blogging be gone!!! But not really....

I don't know what it is about blogging, but we really just don't get along. Like, not at all. During the last semester of my college career, I was in this really *awesome* English class. I loved the teacher, I loved the material, I loved the class so much that I actually arrived early or on time for most of the semester. That in and of itself is a true feat, believe me. But you see, we had this blog thing we were supposed to do for the course. It didn't have to be complicated or anything, we just had to post something on the class website that was somehow logically related to the material on a weekly basis. But I just couldn't do it. I posted no more than five times throughout the 14-week semester. Those posts were "the bomb" if I do say so myself; I did indeed "drop some knowledge" each and every time. But I really hated sitting down and writing them. All that explanation, the feeling of being obligated to write in correct grammar when really all I wanted to do was fill the page with lowercased i's and "prolly" and "wanna" and "gonna" b/c I'm too lazy to spell out two full words and hold down the shift button. Or maybe it was the fact that I knew I was technically being forced to write those blogs, that if I didn't write them I was going to FAIL THE CLASS!!! (but not really b/c yeah, I only wrote five and I did really well in the class). Is it my rebellious side coming through? Down with rules? Down with organized thinking? Perfect timing considering my new-found profession...
Anyway. I guess I just wanted to give an explanation for the late-as-all-heck blogs and the long lapses between posts. I do have things to say. I do. I'm just to busy/tired/lazy to type them down. And that's truly a shame b/c I really love typing.
And to be quite honest, a small part of me is worried about my lack of motivation to blog. What if it's during the school year and something happens in one of my classes (can be a big or small incident) that gets me thinking or gets me riled up or brings up a new question or issue for me, what happens then? I could go to my blog and post something about it, maybe some previously-enlightened Teacher Corps participant will have the answer or a suggestion; maybe what I'm contemplating will start some good ol' healthy debate. But will I actually post those thoughts? I probably won't. Just bein real...
Or maybe something will happen in school that won't through me off my mental rocker necessarily but will be worth a blog post. And maybe what's happened to me has already happened to some other teacher I know and it'll just be nice to know that you're not the only person that this crazy stuff is happening to. But will that story ever become an official Ghost Story? Yeeeeeahhhh it's kinda doubtful.
Me + Blog = Generally Incompatible.
And I guess that's kind of unfortunate.

I'll try to write on a topic of greater importance next time...

Learning in groups...

Sometime during the third week of summer school, possibly on a Thursday, I taught a lesson on haikus. We'd been discussing poetry that entire week and different literary tools that can be used, like assonance and alliteration. So that Thursday or so I taught them about haikus. We went over some examples, counted the syllables... Then I made them write haikus individually. That went off without a hitch. So then I split the class into two groups to work together: one group of two and one group of three. I assigned a topic, they wrote about it. Simple and straightforward.
Getting the students to work together was harder than I expected it to be. I could understand to an extent. When I was younger I was kind of timid and shy as a student, so if I had to work in groups it was sometimes hard for me to start talking with my classmates and participating in the discussion. But at least I'd get up out of my seat and move to wherever my group was supposed to be congregating. It was a hassle just getting my summer school students to turn their desks even slightly towards each other. I kept on repeating to the students that they all had to contribute to the discussion and decide what point to make with their haikus and the best way to get that message across as a group, but I felt like my efforts were mostly futile.
For the first haiku I assigned, it just didn't work out. A couple of people never really contributed, they just let the other person/people in their group make decisions for them. So I assigned a second haiku and gave the students a little bit more time to write it. Doing this gave me more time to go around to both groups and try to motivate the students who weren't participating to contribute more. The second haiku went a little better: everyone contributed at least a little bit, but still not in equal amounts.
The following week, I taught my students personification and onomatopoeia for one of my last English lessons. They caught on to the material pretty quickly. I divided the class into two groups of three for another group writing activity. This time, however, each student played a specific role in the group. The assignment was to write either a story of 2-3 paragraphs or a poem. In the writing, there had to be at least two instances of each of the following: onomatopoeia, personification, assonance, alliteration and rhyme. They also had to describe the rhythm of their writing sample. So with six requirements, each student in a group would be responsible for two of them. They could decide who would be responsible for what on their own, as long as the requirements were met. Each student had to write his or her name on the writing and list their responsibilities. This time the exercise was very successful. Granted, I still made sure to remind the class that each student had to be participating, and I went around to the desks and asked each person what two things they were responsible for, but I think that holding each student accountable for some aspect of the end product of the activity really made it easier to get everyone to contribute in even amounts and made the activity as a whole much more enriching. I was very pleased.