Tuesday

Tuesday are always interesting.  Due to lesson planning procrastination and having a class with all three of the grades I teach on Monday's I have adopted a system to start my Grade 6 week on Tuesdays.  No use and having to have all three lessons ready for Monday, right?  Also, as a new teacher it takes a few time of giving a lesson for me to get a good feel for it.  This is a problem because I only teach a lesson four or so times depending on how well it works and if the students can get more out of it.  If you do that math, it means the lesson is in good shape by the time it is getting shelved.  (For those teachers out there feel free to send any constructive commentary you would like, at anytime.)

Jumping back to last week - or maybe it was the week before - our principal told Julie and me at breakfast that he wanted to watch one of our classes that day.  Before breakfast was over he said it may have to be the next day.  Julie and I didn't here any more about it until this morning.  As I was working on putting together my grade six lesson that need to be delivered in a couple hours one of the other teachers let me that the principal would be observing today.  Fortunately, he choose the second grade six class (on Tuesday's I teach two grade six classes in the AM and two grade two class in the PM), so I got a rehearsal. 

After three months it is still quite difficult to get the lesson level of difficulty on par with where the students are.  This was evident in my first grade six class. It was too hard.  So I got ten minutes to re-organize for the next class.  The good thing about being observed is that the students that are normally in your class are replaced with incredibly well behaved identical twins.  The flip side of that positive is that they are much more shy than under normal conditions.  (This statement is backed by an entire two experiences of being observed while teaching.)  The class went well and while I am sure my lesson will get better over the next two classes, it could have been a lot worse.  After about half the class the students got up the nerve to ask the principal some of the practice questions and he was a good sport and did his best answering. 

Julie's class went extremely well. She told me she forgot the principal and other teachers were even in the room.  This is that big of a surprise as I am pretty sure she is better at this than I am.

The other big event of the day was that a school wide meeting is being held tomorrow for the teachers to discuss student assessments and evaluations.  The English teachers have to due their discussion in English.  This is quite daunting for the non-native speaking English teachers so they were rehearsing their comments and getting Julie and I to do some fine tuning.  It will be interesting to see how it goes.  This time we'll actually see as Julie and I are going to participate.  Hopefully we'll do as well as the other English teachers who have prepared their comments much more than we have.  Luckily I only have two classes tomorrow, so I should have plenty of time if I need to prepare anything!

Have a great Tuesday,
-Ryan