Will you become a recorder, can a monkey/parakey do this job?
The school I work at is on a semester schedules. Research will go both ways on the productivity on having such a long class and ending half way through a year and blah blah blah. My blog is about teaching not research. Anyway, we have turned over and I am teaching the same two courses again. My worst nightmare, that I am going to be placed as the "FST teacher" and fall into the slump of teaching the same subject twice a year for each year for the rest of my life until I sound like the teacher from Charlie Brown.
This is not the case, as I found recently. As I have started to teach lessons for the second time I am better prepared, more confident, and able to look for more connections though out the topics. I am able to locate topics that created large struggle and those that were not really needed. This is my first repeat however i am finding myself more interested in doing it better. I want this course to run smoother, more activities, self discovery, task learning, questioning, and higher cognitive thinking. I want to actually apply what my 50 thousand dollar graduate schooling told me to apply. This is what excites me, this is why I know, I am not able to be replaced by a tape recorded.
The already planned lessons have given me that ability to be more stern in the classroom, be better at getting kids to the board, enrich learning so that everyone has a chance to understand. I am prepared for questions that are going to stump the kids, but I am also surprised to the knowledge each class brings.
I spoke with a older mentor science teacher this morning at brunch, he has been very welcoming and helpful. To have a well experienced teacher who has taught all levels including AP talk and interact with you as an equal has been inspiring and motivating. i am sure I will speak of him more often as I interact frequently with Mr. H. An ex-service man I find talking to him to be like my dad, and it is why I encourage the conversation. He has been a great mentor and guider, constantly enforcing me that my path is correct and I am doing great work, similar to my father as well. Mr. H, spoke with me about repeat teaching and that it has enriched him to create better labs, enforce topics that will later create less questions when teaching the same students in a high course. He has been able to intergrate subject topics and encourage learning.
I hoep that this reteaching will keep pressing me forward to try new activities to enrich learning styles in my classroom. This will also help me to have many new problems to differentiate learning for those students in my course that are special. I want to teach all levels of learners in mathematics and I feel that I can connect very well with all as well. I seek trust from my students and motivation to succeed. I can build on these structures as I teach more material and become better versed in topic areas. Like working out I do not want to become stronger in specific muscles I do not only want to be well equipped in one topic of mathematics. Later as I have mastered one topic I will hope to venture into other subject areas of math and round myself. I want to be the perfect circle of teaching mathematics.
I hope this is a realistic goal for teaching.
Ryan
you do sound better and more confident. i never want to teach the same class forever, but teaching a course multiple times has its benefits, as you are learning. listen to mr. h...he sounds like a reasonably wise man so far. just because someone isn't in your discipline doesn't mean he or she can't be a mentor. one of my best mentor teachers was an older gentleman who was an english teacher. we saw the world and kids in very similar ways, and he helped me navigate a system that was not the best for me to work in. as someone outside my department who was an advocate, he was able to help me in a lot more ways than i ever would have thought possible. he wasn't assigned to me--we found each other. oddly enough, he was a mr. h as well, and had grown up not far from where i had lived in ohio just before moving to arizona, where i met him.
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