ECS field log: Oct. 25, 2010

Today I taught my first lesson, together with my field partner. I was pretty nervous. The big plan was to teach a Phys-ed lesson, where we taught the kids some footballs skills, mainly throwing, catching, and running routes. We originally planned to teach them the very basics of gripping the football to throw it, and where to place their hands to catch it, then following up with a warmup, and an exercise where students ran routes and caught a pass, undefended at first, and defended afterward.

We ran into some issues kind of early. First off, My partner and I had to basically participate in order to get some kids off of the bench, as they didn't have anyone to play catch with, and pairing these two kids together was asking for trouble. The one was a bit more of an instigator, and the other was obviously incredibly shy and nervous about doing the activity at all. This kept us from being able to watch the students, and comment on what they should do to improve their skills. However, our co op took over this role, which was pretty considerate.

There was another issue in running the routes... no matter what routes we told the students to run (We had a sheet of paper that illustrated the routes, neither him nor I expected the students to know any route by name), the students would basically run a very sloppy out, or lazy post. I started only telling students to run curls, to see if any of them would catch on, even with extended explanation. No such luck. At this point, we decided to scrap the exercise with the defender, as it would have been a debacle, I'm sure.

We moved, afterward, just onto a game of continuous football. It's pretty well "Ultimate frisbee" with a football. Two steps with the ball, ball can't touch the ground, students had to get the ball in either net. We split the gym into two halves to get more kids involved, and get the kids more touches. This worked out well, the students really liked this game, and everyone got involved in some regard.

I was a bit worried, personally, about an adaptive dimension. There are two students in the class who are pretty well missing a hand, through a birth defect. We asked the teacher what we should do, and he said they adapt themselves. Going too overboard in catering to them only singles them out or alienates them. Honestly, he was right. They made some dandy catches, and the one might catch better than I can.

The rest of the day was pretty standard, we helped out with this, that, and the other. My ECS partner and I kind of discussed some classroom management strategies, as the music teacher used the waiting strategy, and basically whittled the whole class away, as half of the class talked freely and the other half got frustrated. With this, I don't think waiting is always the best strategy, and sometimes you have to cut more of an imposing figure to keep a class in line. Nothing too out of hand, but this teacher would have done herself a favor in taking a more active role in classroom management.

And that was the morning in my ECS class. Next week I'm teaching a social studies lesson on the long rifle debate in Canada.

Changing gears, here...

Yeah, so this thing has been collecting dust. Honestly, looking at political cartoons, even to make fun of them, is depressing. Might pick it up again, but for now, I'm going to use this thing for my ECS field reflections.

Oct. 17

The first thing I did, after walking through the door, was talk to the receptionist. She was phenomenally nice, almost strangely so, but I think she just registered that I was nervous and was trying to make me feel comfortable. It worked. I met my co op right afterward, who was talking to my ECS partner. Honestly, seeing teachers involved with any sports programs is kind of funny, in that they operate outside of the dress code. Needless to say, I felt a little overdressed, but off we went to the room.

I guess his class is a grade 7/8 split. In these situations, I can't help but wonder if these splits are for struggling grade 8's, exceptional grade 7's, or any such reason. At any rate, we sat around for a while, making stale, awkward chit-chat with our co op until class started. There were a few kids who walked by, and one made a point of introducing himself to us. The teacher later informed us that he was a higher maintenance student. I'm always a little torn about this practice of warning new teachers, or future teachers, about certain kids. I mean, if the student is higher maintenance, I'll surely find out on my own. Telling me this only colors my view of this student right from the start. I don't know, I'd much prefer to come in with a clean slate.

Phys-Ed wasn't anything overly remarkable, aside from the warm up. The teacher kind of had a series of stations set up, marked off with big, laminated cards made of construction paper. Each one had an exercise on it, and a number of reps to be done. Honestly, it was pretty good, because they were mostly core exercises that more people should do, and nobody ever does.

What followed this was a language exercise, just correcting a few sentences, and then the students went off to music, and then french. The music class was a funny thing to watch, as the students seriously ran rough-shod over the teacher. Mind you, her choice in activities weren't the greatest, and her classroom management strategies bordered on bizarre.

The French teacher certainly had her hands full as well, but she did a better job handling the students. I think it's almost a natural, or universal rule, that students rowdy up when dealing with any teacher but their standard home room teacher. She did a good job with them though. However, what I found strange was that french was quite obviously not her major, or field of study. She confirmed this afterward, saying she got the job by knowing someone, essentially. She was an incredibly nice lady, and seemed like a friendly, good-spirited teacher, so I'm up in the air with my thoughts regarding this.

That was my first day in the classrooms, and my reflections therein. Enjoy.