Wow… That first hour of teaching was incredibly insightful to me. Let’s talk about the process.
Every project that I throw myself at needs to be perfect to a T, and that could be the perfectionist in me talking. Lady Perfection has taken me down with her many a time for trying to be too well prepared, believe it or not there were times when I was over rehearsed. If that wasn’t enough already to poison my ability to create a 50 mins lesson plan, here comes Mr. Overthinker. He, on the other hand, enjoys bringing doubt in my mind with pointless questions, “are you sure this will take 5 mins? I bet you it will take 10.”, “do you really believe this is an interesting activity?”, “comprehension questions? the 1950’s called, they want their ideas back!”
Therefore, I prepared filler activities, just in case we find ourselves short on time and revised my presentation at least a 1000 times and paid attention to the layout, graphics and colours. Basically everything! Even the choice of font. I thought my material was foolproof. I had a script to take me exactly from point A to point B to point C!
Let’s talk about the execution.
I went into that class and started talking and I came to the sudden realization that these students were looking up to me to teach them something. For a second, I forgot everything I had planned and I started to wing it. Forget the script! We’re completely straying and landing on point D, point G, point Z right now. Boy! I thought I was fully prepared.
However, it was the best thing that could have happened. Ken and I were quick on our feet to talk through the awkward, silent moments and kept a nice flow between activities and lessons. I was up and ready to engage conversation (I remembered Jack’s metaphor of the tennis game) and I learned so much about all the different energies and personalities that were present in that classroom.
At the warm-up, people were a bit shy to come forward by themselves and talk so we had to select them, however, they started to loosen up and talk about a lot of things. Our sponsor teacher even praised us for succeeding in making one particular student open up and talk about themselves.
During our little comprehension passage, I asked if my group had any questions for me and they did not. Everything was clear. This brought me to the conclusion that:
maybe my text was too easy?
maybe they’re too shy to admit if something wasn’t completely clear?
Nonetheless, we had 8 mins left before going back to the main classroom and my students were done with their exercise. I wouldn’t have known that unless I had asked. I felt my feet get cold and my heart racing. Oh no. I suppressed my mini panic and engaged in conversation about words in the passage, fun facts, and answering in complete sentences, which were well received.
The most daunting side of this experience is probably the dead silence after I ask a question to the class. Absolutely no one volunteers to answer (that’s a lie, one did participate very eagerly) and due to the online setting, it’s practically impossible to detect confusion (only depending on the tone of voice).
The next activity took longer than we expected and that’s what we will be working on more from now on. Ken and I finished 4 mins after the class was supposed to end, which isn’t a lot, but good to keep in mind.
This first hour was a good test for us. We dipped our toes in the pool and hope that next time, it will all be smooth sailing from there on out.
