Go Sawks

First of all, the Red Sox are going to the ALCS... woo!

Secondly, my Friday observation.

Teachers Observed:
Mrs. Mandy Wimpey (8:00 - 9:30) - MT IV: Statistics
Mrs. Terri Cortez (Substitute, 9:35 - 11:05) - CP Pre-Calculus

Mrs. Wimpey had to lecture her students. They, along with myself, were given those clickers with A, B, C, and D on them. She was using an interactive assessment tool that allowed the students to answer questions with anonymity. First of all, I think this is an EXCELLENT tool; if a student gets an answer wrong, the class doesn't know about it, and if the majority of the class gets a question wrong, the teacher knows what he or she needs to focus on. Problem is, the kids start to not care after a few questions, and begin to joke around instead of taking the assessment seriously. So what did Mrs. Wimpey do? She took care of business. For about 5-10 minutes she lectured her students, but not in that mean teacher sort of way. She stopped the assessment, took up the controllers, kept her voice down, and instead of saying things like, "What's wrong with ya'll? Stop joking around!", she said things that related to the students. She talked about what they would do outside of High School after they graduated, how Stats was probably the most important math subject to know in their lives, how they needed the class to graduate, etc. She kept it very calm, very cool, and she had a certain sweetness to her voice that, as I noticed, made students nod and understand that they were in the wrong. That's exactly how I want to handle situations in my classroom, and I hope when those times arise, I'll be able to do so.

Then I went to Mrs. Cortez's class. Mrs. Cortez was out at a math conference, and so there was a substitute. She, Mrs. Cortez, had assigned work from the book as well as a worksheet. I collected my assessment data and sat down to do some analysis on it. After a little while, I decided I'd go ahead and walk around to make sure everyone was doing alright (because the substitute was certainly too busy reading her Vogue magazine). A lot of the students said they were having problems with number 60, so I did something... I taught! I got up, and without any sort of nerves or jitters, I taught. I went through the problem, asking questions along the way to make sure that the students were answering the problem and I wasn't simply giving them the solution. While I was up there, I thought of things that I would've never thought of if I had been a student, and I was really excited to see that inner-teacher come out. It was an incredible feeling.

This made me realize it's not public speaking that I have a fear of. It's not standing up infront of crowds. It's grades. That's right, grades. If I know I'm being graded on something I'm giving, it bothers me. It gets to me knowing that there's a rubric sitting infront of a professor and she's checking off things -- "Oh he did this, but he didn't do that." It's nerve wracking. I understand that I'll have administrators sit in on my classes from time-to-time, and I'm sure I'll be a little nervous then, but it felt like when it was just me and the students I was really doing what I was meant to do.

Just a shame that I can't carry that over into my college courses.