Lesson Plans + Growing Up

The administrative side of me gets so tickled when planning for teaching.

I really like planning my lessons and then teaching them.

It's neat.

To work so hard to plan in detail and then see my students benefiting from that planning. I really do enjoy seeing things come together.

Last week for whole class reading (when you read a book from a collection of stories and focus on a skill or particular thing with reading) the students really did not grasp the vocabulary. When it came time to test, they got all the questions about the story right, but the vocab. aye aye aye.

So this week, and I'm really excited to see, I focused more on the vocabulary. I took more time to plan it in detail. I had students go look through the story to find the words and use the "clues" in the story to define the words. I'm really hoping this helps their vocabulary improve. I'm excited to see if it worked.

Next week I start teaching math. AH. NOT my strongest subject. Math makes me very anxious and trying to do math in front of the kids really makes me extra nervous. YET. in planning my math lessons I have to think through the problems and how to explain them. I think in planning and teaching math, I will overcome my anxiety and become more able to do the math and not worry about it.

In other news: I am having a great time working with my teacher. As I take over more of the classroom, her role changes from teacher of me, to more of an equal. I feel like as I grow, the more able both she and I are able to view me as a fellow professional instead of weird teacher-college studentness. Of course - she's still an amazing teacher and I am still a learning teacher.

I see myself changing too. At first, I really was resisting this whole "grown-up" thing - I REALLY wanted to be grown-up, BUT at the same time, I didn't want the roles and the responsibility that came with it. Now, I like the responsibility. I appreciate that I go to "work" each day and feel that my day was productive. I don't mind sitting down and writing my lesson plans - because I know that the quality of my planning will reflect the quality of my teaching. I like feeling myself toughen up to becoming more responsible and disciplined.

I bet, one could apply this to marriage or a committed relationship as well. - aka - i really want to be married, but perhaps once I get there will realize that there are a lot of responsibilities that go along with it. I will have the choice to face those responsibilities and grow, or give up. Talk about a crossroads!