Yikes!!! Thank heavens this week is done! Let me just tell you how stressful it is to be the first group for T.A. for the day assignment. Do to my need to go above and beyond in everything I do (and my competitive nature… thanks dad) I felt compelled to try to really stand out. I wanted to make my mark especially because Erica and I were the first group. Is wrong for me to want to make it more difficult for the groups following us to present?
What did I learn?
Where to start… where to start…
I learned a very important lesson in this week. Teaching is NOT as easy as it looks. I have a new respect all of my past teachers. I applaud those who take so much of their time to make their classroom fun, creative, different, interesting, and exciting. I learned that it takes a special kind of person with a special gift to teach to be able to communicate well with their students. I also learned how to do a close reading on a poem, texture was one of the elements of the 12 that I really didn’t know anything about before reading. Diction, structure, figurative language, style, characterization, ect. All of those elements I have learned about in AP lit and AP comp. Texture refers to those features of a work of literature which contribute to its meaning or significant as distinguished from that signification itself. I just want to mention one more thing, a little side not. This week I believe the one thing that had the biggest impact on me is that I realized you can’t receive helped if you don’t ask for it.
What did I do?
It was Thursday afternoon around 5 o’clock I got a phone call from my group partner Erica. Since our T.A. for the day thingy was due on Monday we decided it was best to meet up today and get it done. Since I had this soccer event to go to I said I would call her once I was done and we would hit the books. It was 9 o’clock by the time we got started on our project. We were freaking out; we had never taught a class before and had no idea where to begin. 4 ½ hours later (1:30 am) we had our lesson plan, in class activity, quiz, journal free write prompt, and power point all done. Four days later we had our scheduled meeting with our professor to finalize our teaching experience for October 12th. Our scheduled meeting time was from 3:30 to 4:30 I think we left around 5, maybe 5:30 ish…. Professor Bolduc-Simpson should have known when it comes to Erica and me…. Well let’s just say we need a little extra time to make sure things are perfect, we can’t help ourselves. All in all I think we did a pretty good job. What I do know we worked our butts off to do it well and make sure we set the bar really high.
How did I feel about what I learned, what I did and how I felt about what I learned and did?
WOW! 7 weeks, and it is midterm already! I just would like to say so far it has been an adventurous ride. Even though it may seem as though I complain a lot about this class it is only because I am generally a “freak out” kind of person when it comes to school work ( thanks mom). I am a perfectionist; I’m competitive, and determined. It is a very humbling experience to sit here with a B+ after analyzing the amount of work I put into all of my assignments. I sure have learned a lot so far. I learned to not let the little things upset me like…. Receiving a 13 out of 25 (for all of you who don’t know it is calculated out to be a 52%) on my rough draft, in which I totally forgot to do the self assessment and annotation which counted for ½ of that assignment. My initial reaction was OMG I am going to fail this class because of this grade. When in actuality I was informed by my professor (after I e-mailed her so I could redo my assignment) that only amounted to 2.5 % of my final grade…. Now that I look back that was a lot of worrying over nothing!
Even though these 7 weeks have not always been fun I know when I am old and think back to these years of my life I will have forgotten all of the tears and hard weeks when I would think to myself how am I going to get through this!! I will only remember the fun I had with those who went through it with me. I know for a fact I won’t forget that crazy =) literature teacher I had who kicked my butt and pushed to a level I didn’t even know was there.
Moral of the story is you can only learn from the past not change it. As for now, I think I will just work my hardest to follow directions and hopefully that leads to an A in this class. If not at least I will know in my heart I did everything to the best of my abilities. In the end when it is all said and done and the fat lady is singing I will feel victorious because I will have no regrets.
* HEY DON'T FORGET TO CHECK OUT MY VIDEO LINK ....just follow the arrow ;) *
I couldn't get to the link. I will copy and paste it and watch it. Yeah, teaching isn't easy.
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