WoW
2 weeks in the new job! It’s still everything I could wish for – and in comparison to reports of fellow graduate teachers, certainly NOT your average conditions. I still feel as though I ought to pinch myself and can’t believe I have been given such an amazing opportunity. It is hard work but I am challenging myself to become a great LOTE teacher. Sue came in to observe a lesson of mine and it wasn’t as successful a lesson as I had hoped. The lesson was meant to be the culmination of a series or predominantly grammar focused work on the partitive article and its exceptions- I had asked the girls to prepare a dialogue, which they were to act out whilst I filmed them (we moved to the main hall for this and the girls could dress up in their chosen characters). The most obvious flaw was that I had miscalculated – I had been concerned about running out of time yet we finished so much ahead of the end of the lesson that I had to take the girls back to their classroom and I hadn’t got anything great up my sleeve for the last 5 minutes (which seemed like an eternity of course). I should have halved the time for the role play and used the remainder of the lesson for something new or different altogether. Sue also rightly pointed out that by nor correcting the girls’ dialogues upfront, they now went ahead and learned something potentially wrong off by heart, which is harder to undo. So I should have collected and corrected their work first before setting off on the role play. She also thought my warm up activity was too hard for a warm up. I used Flashcards to revisit the partitive article and its exceptions, but I should have started with just letting them state the items on the Flashcards – give them a ’success event’ before testing more complicated grammar points. I also think that next time I use video I will get a student to be in charge of the camera, as I couldn’t jot down comments and felt I could have had problems in a less well behaved class because I was concentrating on the videoing rather than what was happening amongst the non-performing girls. Always the encouraging mentor, Sue pointed out that she was happy with what she had seen in terms of my relationship with the girls. She thought I had a presence in the classroom and had their attention and managed transitions without losing control. She said such a demeneaour is not acquired – you either have it or you don’t, and she seemed satisfied with my performance in that respect. I guess what she said with that was that the rest (ie. the actual methodology of making sure learning occurs) IS something that can be learned and practised, and I want nothing more than to show her that I am listening and learning and applying and therefore hopefully visibly improve my teaching methods.
In one way it’s daunting to think that she’ll come to one lesson per week, but I see it as a gift, as her feedback allows me to rethink my approaches and detect their flaws. I just hope I’ll get the hang at some stage!
