We had a week long project to teach a 10 minute lesson with a partner. My partner and I decided to teach a poem called "Dreams" by Langston Hughes to the group. It's a nice little poem and she knew the ASL to accompany it. We taught the group the poem and had them practice the sign language. The lesson planning was interesting and challenging as they gave us loose guidelines but we hadn't had any real lesson planning lessons. We spent a lot of time discussing how best to co-teach, how to position ourselves to be most beneficial to the class, how to position the class, and, most importantly, what are we really trying to teach!? We had a chance to do a dry-run with another pair the day before our lesson, and we gained valuable feedback from that. On Thursday afternoon we taught our "class" the poem and the sign language. It was really fun and it was interesting to see how we adjusted our lesson plan on the fly to account for the previously unknown environment and students. It went very well.
Dreams, by Langston Hughes
Hold fast to dreams
for if dreams die
life is a broken-winged bird
that cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
for when dreams go
life is a barren field
frozen with snow.
We were in groups of ten people, five sets of partners, and everyone got to teach a lesson. In addition to our poem, we learned about how to construct a healthy compost pile, how to tie a strong knot (I forgot the name of it though!), more about healthy eating and exercise, and how to make a paper airplane. Which leads me to my next thought...
I spent today at school for the final in-service day. I asked a ton of questions, collated papers, stuffed folders, and attended a staff meeting and a district-wide employee recognition ice cream social! It was a busy day. The district IT was fighting a DOS (denial of service attack, which pretty much takes down their network) so the teachers were all stressed about last minute emails, printing, and presentations saved online. All was resolved by lunch time though.
At our staff meeting I sat quietly in the corner, feeling like an intruder. I made a quiet joke about it to my mentor and our awesome school counselor. I said I feel like a parent wearing teacher clothing and sneaking in to the meeting. They laughed. She patted my knee and said, "You're one of us now! You get to hear all the secrets." It felt good to be there. :)
The first activity we did at the staff meeting was a communications game. Half the room (my side) made paper airplanes. The teachers at my table were saying they don't know how to make airplanes, so I stepped right up and demonstrated the process I'd learned just yesterday at UVEI. They all followed along. Then we had to partner up with the other half of the room, stand back-to-back, and verbally instruct our partner on how to make the same airplane. My partner did an awesome job, but the partners of my tablemates did not. Apparently I did not teach my neighbors well enough, as they were unable to reteach the skill! They said the lesson learned is that cheating is bad. :) For those of us who created matching planes (original and replicate) we got to fly the replicates for a distance challenge. My partner's plane won! Yay for my first staff meeting and yay for my UVEI colleagues who taught an excellent paper airplane lesson!!
I am now very tired and still need to learn many names before Monday. I'd like to know most, if not all, of the students as they come in on Monday.
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