mopper’s Neighborhood

Okay, I apologize for the horrible Star Trek reference. I personally detest Star Trek but my wife loves it so I'm not short on knowledge in that department. Anyhow for those of you who aren't trekkies Vulcans are an alien race from the show that are similar to humans except for 2 things; 1)they have pointy elf ears and 2)they lack any emotion whatsoever. Vulcans actually suppress their emotions because they feel emotions interfere with higher level thought and are a weakness of the human race.

In watching myself teach how to interpret and create weather maps, I was reminded of those monotonous creatures from my wife's favorite show, speaking calmly and logically but completely devoid of emotion or life. This turned what could have been a good lesson into a very mediocre one. That's not to say that I didn't do some things well. 

Some strengths of my lesson include:

1)Movement around the room-reaching all 4 corners

2)I also spoke very slowly and clearly in a way that there was no doubt in what I was trying to communicate to my students.

3)There was a logical transition from one activity to another. Moving from notes to group activity and then finally independent guided practice.

4)My questioning techniques and breaking information down for my students. I have been told by my evaluators that this is probably my greatest strength.They say that my questions are always excellent and that I do a good job of asking follow up questions to break things down if needed.

5)Good poise, confidence, and body language

However, the weaknesses in my lesson far outweigh the strengths, maybe not in number but in importance. I also now fully realize with even greater clarity that I am a long way off from where I want to be.

Some things I noticed that need to be improved are:

1)My greatest weakness, my tone of voice. While I speak with great clarity and my voice carries very well, I have almost no variance in the tone with which I speak. It's just one constant dull tone that never changes and it transformed my classroom into a very boring place to be.

2)The second thing I did that I need to avoid repeating was turning my back to the class. While this didn't cause any problems during the period I taught, I need to keep in mind that I only had 5 students in the room. If you turn your back for any period of time to a class of 25 or 30 students, you're inviting some real problems

3)The 3rd thing that I need to improve on is give more clear directions for group activities. While the activity got the students up and involved, their was confusion and I had to repeat directions more than once and in the end the students still didn't perform the activity the way I wanted it performed. I know that in the future I will try to have instructions for group activities in at least 2 forms of media, for example both verbally and on an overhead transparency.

4)The next thing I need to do is be better prepared for things the kids might not know. I made far too many assumptions that the kids had previous knowledge of something and it wound up bringing forth some class time management issues.

5)My next issue was with classroom management. I would acknowledge issues like saying "guys, get to work", when kids were talking; or "get your head up" when kids were closing their eyes. This acknowledgement needs to be backed up with consequences, otherwise I am going to have some management issues in  the fall.

6) Finally I need to make independent guided practice the focus of my lesson. This should be the most important part of any lesson and the area where real active learning takes place. Unfortunately I only left about 8 to 10 minutes of class time for this and nobody completed my assessment before the bell rang. Now there is no way to know if the accomplished the objective that was set for the lesson and no real way to know if I was effective.

Again there are some things that I did well, but I have to drastically improve in several areas to become the teacher that I need to be. Fortunately all of my flaws are correctable and I will work very hard with the time I have between now and august to make those corrections. 

Well, I filmed myself earlier this week teaching, and I was not surprised that I was surprised at what I saw.  Every time I record myself or film myself I am disappointed in how my voice sounds.  My voice is not deep at all, and it is more country than I imagine.  As far as teaching, one thing I noticed is I tend to pace back and forth at the front of the room but I do not move around the room as much as I should.  While I am talking/teaching I stay at the front of the room but I only move to the back when I am not talking.

I consider myself well-liked by my students, so I tolerate a certain amount of "misbehavior".  That is, I ignore a certain amount of speaking out as long as everyone focuses on the lesson.  However, I did not realize the amount of talking/laughing that goes on that I do not notice.  While I am doing all of my pacing, students are talking and snickering amongst themselves.  I need to do better with that. 

While I dislike watching recording of myself, I found it incredibly useful.  I think the things I noticed in the video will do a lot to improve my teaching and the learning experience for the students. 

#10: "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck."

I videotaped myself teaching on school spirit day. This might of made me feel like my lesson was better then it actually was (because I love the idea of teaching in a Michael Jordan jersey). Alas, there were many things learned from my lesson, and some good moments. 

Nobody likes to hear his own voice on an answering machine. Go ahead and multiply that by ten when you're talking about both audio and video on a recording. We had to watch film all the time playing football for the last decade-and-a-half of my life, but that pales in comparison to watching yourself teach for the first time on film. It was painful. 

I can't decide whether its fitting or ironic that my last time teaching English IV at HSSS was videotaped. Its probably neither...

This assignment has afforded me the opportunity to not only see, but identify, and painstakingly experience what exactly my peers, evaluators, supervisors, and (most detrimentally) students have endured the past couple of weeks. And no matter how many times these very criticisms were pointed out, written out, verbalized and reiterated (to the point of exhaustion) it took 50 grueling minutes of listening to the sound of my wavering voice, frantic pacing,and dangerously expressive facial expressions to understand the frustration ( x 10) that my fellow teachers have endured.

What NEEDS to change ASAP:

VOICE:

• The rising, falling and trailing off tendencies of my speech suggest anything but the decisive authoritativeness that my voice needs to command.
• Pausing mid-sentence not only impedes the verbal instruction at hand, it further comes off as unsure or entirely incompetent (either one.)

BODY LANGUAGE(FACIAL EXPRESSIONS):

Ok, so maybe I did get all of 3 hours of sleep the night before and besides doing everything in my power to prevent that from happening again at least need to act like literary and organizational devices are the greatest thing since(insert clich'e) and that they too wouldn't be able to (or desire) to convince me otherwise.  

• Instead, I was noticeably monotone and merely going through the motions. This is bad. How can I expect my students to be positively engaged when there is no central, positive energy to draw from?

MOVEMENT:

On the one hand I did cover "all four walls" both in independent and guided practice but on the detracting other-my clicking shoes and frantic pacing was entirely distracting and not at all facilitating.

• Until personally viewing this, I actually thought my movement suggested a vigilant and thorough informal assessment...but no, apparently not.

INTERACTION WITH STUDENTS:

• I met the minimum on this: "Teacher interacts with most students, but other students are neglected".. and that precarious "but other students are neglected" qualifies whatever points I did earn in this category.
• Especially in the context of this lesson, (a review) every single student should have been actively engaged, (not merely when they had the extrinsic motivation of winning a  homework pass.)
• Even when my students did volunteer answers, I either interrupted them when they stumbled, muttered, paused (or all of the following) or tried to "paraphrase" their entirely wrong answer to fit the one I was looking for...
• I now understand that  "wait time" is imperative not only when waiting for a hand to go up, but moreover, when the student does answer, reconsiders their answer, and answers again.
• This tendency to sacrifice 'wait time' is obscurely, but actually related to poor time management. All too often, as in this case- it was 25 minutes into class and independent practice had not even been introduced and so I non-sensically rushed  through the single most important part of instruction: (informal) assessment.

INSTRUCTION

• I talk at the students, rather than prompt their own thinking.
• There is no place for lecturing. To ensure a 50 minute student-centered lesson, I need to be talking 10 minutes-max.
• I now know, that I need to shut up.

CLASSOOM MANAGEMENT:

• Although the prospect of winning homework passes appeased any overt displays of sarcasm, apathy, or resistance- compliance was not where it should have been because I failed to demand that it be.
• Instead of silently placing a writing assignment (consequence) on the offending student's desk and continuing with instruction, I interrupted the lesson to explain why (ie. invite debate). Even if an explanation were necessary, it needs to be decisively declared not apologetically mumbled...

So this is where I'm at.  Its not where I need to be. Since mirrors do not lie, I'm about to go shamelessly rehearse Mondays lesson in front of the mirror.

I watched myself teach today and was rather pleased with results.  Although it is rather strange to see and hear yourself talk in front of a classroom, it was thankfully less than terrifying.  A few key notes:

            1. I use my hands a lot when I talk.  I think this is good.  

            2. I talk a bit too much -i.e- I need to have the students do more work in             class

            3. The overhead machine is awesome - it lets me walk around and talk             while having notes on the board.

Either way, I am quite pleased with how the lesson went.  I really need to talk less though, especially since I will be teaching blocks (94 min) next year, and I am worried that over lecturing will be ineffective and exhausting.

Some humanoid-like creature is mumbling nervously in some incomprehensible language and an unbearable tone is pacing frantically as though it were on some form of narcotic.  I am told that this creature is me, that it is teaching, and that I need to evaluate and reflect upon its (in)ability to do so.  Let us begin.

First, while it is completely unbearable to watch myself on camera doing something that I still need significantly more practice at, I'll start by saying that it could've been worse.  As often as I tend to put myself down, I will say that there are some things I think I do well as a teacher.  I ask lots of questions, usually let the students get the answer, give them a good amount of practice, and remain positive (if irritating to observers such as myself) when helping those that are stuck.  If I don't learn to be more firm, which isn't really an issue on the video, some of those things might be undermined, but I can at least say that the video confirmed at least a few things that I feel like are going well.

As for things that need improvement:
1.  I talk too much and too fast
2.  I walk too much and too fast
3.  My lessons are plain
4.  My sets are either not very related to the student's lives or not very related to the lesson

There's more than that that needs work, but I can only endure so much self-criticism at a time.  Below are proposed solutions, which I should work on now because once the year starts I'll have a whole new set of problems:

1.  Well, I'll talk less.  I have two lesson plans to write today and I think I'll take the Reluctant Disciplinarian's advice of trying to speak 100 words or less in at least one of them.   I need to overcome my desire to insert myself into the goings-on of the classroom.  Perhaps I'm just lonely and long for human conversation from the corner of the room.  Perhaps I think the students aren't getting it and that rambling more won't actually help.  Perhaps I have some hidden resentment for my students and want to punish them with the sound of my voice.  All are possibilities, but most likely I'm just nervous and feel uncomfortable when I'm not continually offering directions.  If I'm talking and if they're paying attention, they can't be passing judgment on my ability as a teacher.  In any case, we'll see how it goes on Monday.  I'm going to shoot for 50 words or less, in fact.  All the children's dreams are coming true.

2.  I will also walk less and slower.  I feel like this also mostly nervous and its not that much of a negative.  It's good to be moving around the room, I just feel like it becomes a distraction when I do 200 revolutions of the room per lesson.

3.  Dealing with the boredom of my lessons is a little tougher, because I'm an inherently boring person (as many people could testify to), but I'm going to make a larger effort to do activities and (taking the idea of multiple intelligences) provide more of a mix of different ways to learn the same thing, instead of my current "here's a worksheet, here's an example on the board, here's some examples in your book" procedure.

4.  Finally, I'll do better sets and closures, but I dont' really know how.  I have mixed feelings about sets.  I feel like when you have a good one, they're worth doing.  When you don't, you sound like me, asking them stupid questions about pizza only to disappoint them further by changing the topic to fractions.  I haven't had much like finding inspiration from on-line lessons, but I will have the advantage of teaching the same subject at the same school as Lisa, one of the second-years, so perhaps she can be bought or, more likely, I can use the communal planning period to develop/steal ideas from someone who has at least had practice trying to manipulate kids into thinking that they want to learn math. 

More criticism of myself could be offered and certainly will be in the monologues going in my mind as I try to stand silently in class while kids work on Monday, but I have exposed my flaws as a teacher enough for today.  I do not like to have been seen.  Another reflection on a another video that will have to be taken of me teaching is required in a couple of weeks, so incalculable fun for all is forthcoming.  I will try to write again as soon as possible to start pushing all memories of this video and post out of the collective consciousness.

So this is the video blog.  It is one day after the 4th of July.  Given where I am at politically, and what I think of our country and its values, it is an odd holiday for me.

I decided to spend my July 4th weekend in the Delta with friend and family.