Despite the fact that it's been a "short" week (what with having no students on Monday and Tuesday...but still had to work, what with workshops and doing grades and stuff), it's been a terribly trying week. I can't really explain what's been so bad about it, aside from waking up late for work Wednesday and Thursday, having a terrible time with students' behavior in my English class, and getting a bit of a dressing down from the director and my supervising history teacher about my teaching methods (less lecture, more activities so the kids are actively learning). It's just been...rough.
Part of it is just run-down batteries. I feel totally drained, and I keep feeling like I'm screwing everything up with the teaching. Some of my classes frustrate me, some of them I don't feel like I'm doing anything effective, and I'm just worried that I'm failing in my responsibilities as a teacher.
I basically need to spend the entire weekend reevaluating everything I understand about teaching and learning. Part of my problem, of course, is that I keep trying to teach them the same way that I learn information, and that just doesn't work. The other is that I really don't have any formal training in education. I'm having to pick it up as I go along.
I still think I can be a successful teacher, it's just going to be more challenging than I thought it would. I can't just lecture and make them read the book; I can't just sit up there and hope they soak up the information from listening to me cover the material over and over. It's going to take something different, and that's going to require creativity of a sort I'm not used to.
~chuck
Song of the Moment: Led Zeppelin, "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp"
Friday, November 11, 2005
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
If you ever wish a Reader's Digest version of some of what I learned earning my master's degree in English pedagogy, such as the four learning methods or the eight intelligences or basic interactivity techniques, feel free to let me know by e-mail that you wouldn't find it intrusive or disruptive to your "Maaaw, I'd rather do it myself" learning style. *grin* Or just remember what you used to observe me doing with Joel, and thank your stars you are not dealing with He Who Should Not Be Named in your classrooms any more.
If Andria's education classes are any indication, people who teach teaching somehow crossed some into some paradoxical realm where "those who can't, teach" is actually true. And to a scary degree.
Everything you need to know about teaching, you can find in Empire. The easiest and most effective way to teach people anything is by lecturing them as they carry you on their backs through a makeshift obstacle course.
Education professors got nothing on Yoda.
Oh hush, noise monkey. I learned about teaching both formally in my M.A. and experientially in teaching college and university (and high school classes) for more than 15 years now. As well as helping our cricket when he worked under me as a writing consultant.
This English professor may not "got" much on Yoda, but he's "got" somethin' on the sonic simian. Like how to use the word "got".
Yeesh.
Post a Comment