Vacation is Ova!

I trust you've had a wonderfully fun and relaxing vacation this past week and that you're back in the classroom with energy and excitement.

I read your last post, including the reflections from ED 102 and I'm VERY impressed with your honesty, insight, and rationality. Here are my comments on your reflection piece:

I think you're frustration and anger with how the two skeletal comparison lessons transpired is completely normal and expected. When we are excited about something, we tend to raise our expectations of how that particular event will go. When we build up the expectation in our minds, it is easy for things to fall short. While I'm guessing you were being a tougher judge of how things really went that you should, I can understand your frustration in wanting things to be great and not experiencing that sensation. However, tying that emotion to what you see in Joy's teaching illustrates a wonderful and important point: that teaching is a learned practice!! I'm sure your plans and organization for these lessons were superb, but sometimes there are aspects of a great lesson that you can't think about until you have some time in front of kids, experiencing what gets them excited and motivated. While the idea for the lesson is good, the plan is solid, and things appear lined up for a "knock out", there is lack of experience (at least in the beginning) impacting the decisions you make before and during the class - and that's completely normal!! So I'll restate your own advice: learn from Joy. It's OK to set your expectations high and even to compare yourself with Joy. But realize that her experience informs her decisions and that you are in the process of building up your own experience to pull from in the future. That is just part of the process.

What I'm very happy to see is that you made an adjustment regarding the seating chart, stuck to your 'guns' (are you referring your biceps by any chance?), and witnessed a positive result. To me, that is the sign of learning strategies and ideas from Joy that will help you in designing future lessons. The take away message from your reflection is that you were reminded (because I think you already know this), that it takes time to become a good teacher and that taking advantage of the resources you have at BAA will help you achieve that goal.

Moving on to the questions:

I think you've been very honest in listing your strengths and weaknesses and I'm excited to revisit these in the future to see how they may have changed. I want to focus on one thing you wrote: "use student questions that I don't know answers to as springboards for further discussion and research". This is a powerful idea/strategy, but also very difficult to achieve. What are some strategies you might employ for this technique? Let's brainstorm some ways for you to begin to strengthen that skill.

For the time being, here is another question for you to tackle when you have some time!!

Q: Your relationship with Joy and the students at BAA seems very strong and positive. My question is whether things could possibly be "too good" at BAA, such that you are not placed in situations that really challenge you and help you to learn. Can you talk a bit about the challenges that you have faced thus far? Secondly, I realize your classroom is fairly secluded, do you feel any impacts or detriments as a result of not being "close" to the rest of the school? (Not that you should, necessarily, just curious!)

Good stuff Kimmeh - keep it up!