One-Fifth

This afternoon I finished the first one-fifth of my teaching practicum, and it's going pretty darn well.

Had my first of five official observations of one of my lessons done by my university-sent supervisor, and he had nothing but overwhelmingly positive comments about how I presented my lesson topics, my in-front-of-class presence, and my use of tactics: like wait time, and counting down from 3 to 1 before starting a lesson- something I didn't really even do consciously.

Despite having the shit kicked out of my sleep schedule because of the overwhelmingly large number of hours I spent late into the night planning my lessons, I'm tremendously encouraged. Turns out, managing a class of 28 grade 9/10's, even a group that size with 6 kids with ADD/ADHD (as is my case), is tough but manageable.

It's hard to believe there's only four more weeks of this before I get actual, tangible time off. I know that might sound presumptuous as I'm only one week in, but just in this first week, I've felt myself gain more confidence with every new day, and grow in my ability to conduct lessons, manage my classroom, as well as to not lose my train of thought or composure in front of my students.

Students generally like me, and as my supervisor told me this morning, they see me as a teacher with authority - something many student-teachers can falter on. Also, apparently I'm too hard on myself about my lessons. I tend to always find the nit-picky flaws in my presence or execution of a lesson. In other words, something I already knew: I'm a perfectionist. But the good thing is that, about teaching, I've gained the ability to live-critique, or live-observe myself most of the time: in real-time. There is a danger though that this consciousness of being able to 'observe myself' as I teach could turn into unhelpful or nervous self-consciousness, but thankfully I don't see that happening. Generally I'm much more comfortable in front of groups of young people than I am in front of groups of , or even one-on-one with, my peers.