I have been meaning to get on here and post about what I have learned thus far in my Student Teaching experience, but I have been so busy! It only took 8 hours for me to learn that waking up at 5:30 knocks you out!(Well actually the wake up time began at 6 and gradually moved back 5 minutes each morning till I wasn't so rushed to leave) Almost everyday until last Friday I came home and took a nap.
A Quick update before I begin: I took over my first class last Wednesday... it is Psychology with Juniors and Seniors. To satisfy my requirements I need to be solo teaching 5 classes for 10 weeks. I take over my next one (Freshman American History) next Wednesday.
Beside learning that working a full day is exhausting, I have learned other things. For instance, today, I learned that smart kids (the ones that take Psychology because they want to) get activities completed a lot faster than kids that may not be as ambitious. And that those said kids get extremely talkative when they have nothing else to do.
I learned that Pre-Testing may not be such a bad idea (in fact, I'm doing it tomorrow). After preparing a whole activity around Independent and Dependent Variables, since those are usually difficult concepts to understand, I find out that most of them also like Science and are talking upper level courses and already are comfortable with Independent and Dependent Variables. (Something that I still get confused)
On that note, I learned that I should not tell said confusion to a bunch of Juniors and Seniors.
I have also learned that technology is not everyone's best friend and that if your school is still using textbooks from the 1990's and chooses to get the teachers brand new Macbooks and 20 iPads for 20 teachers there is going to be some resentment from your teacher every time he looks at the iPad you insisted on him keeping.
Finally, I have learned that I want an iPad of my own. :)
While that last one was a little friviouls, there are still some things I want to learn. I'm going to list them below and hopefully check them off as the semester goes.
1. How to deal with a student(s) that does not seem to want to be in my class
2. How to think of examples off the top of my head
3. How to include more of the students into discussions instead of me just talking the entire time
4. How to teach students to take notes and not just copy Word-for-Word from the PowerPoint
5. How to teach to the OGT without teaching to the OGT
6. How to effectively use the iPad while teaching
7. How to get students (specifically Freshman) to turn in homework without asking them about it EVERY day. (I'm not sure I can learn that in a semester)
