Part II - The Sequel

I guess the first video was so good that it demanded a sequel.  Or maybe I should call it a re-make? I’m totally kidding.  The second video was just as painful to watch as the first, even if I did do a better job.  Regardless of an obvious improvement, I’m still a first year teacher (really a fourth week teacher) and lesson perfection is far from my reach (if ever even attainable).  There was one part of my lesson where I called on a student to read something on the overhead.  He refused, and I let him get away with it.  I even had a role play that addressed this situation, and I didn’t do anything to reprimand him.  When the moment appeared on the video, I wanted to jump into the computer and shake myself.  DO SOMETHING MR. PREACHER!!!  The most common word in summer school is consequence.  I should have thrown a choice in his face with a nice juicy consequence on one end.  Anyway, that part was not fun to watch.  Other than that I noticed some improvements.  My confidence was much better.  I appeared calm and not as nervous as before.  On the other hand, my energy and enthusiasm for this lesson wasn’t the same as the first lesson I recorded.  That might be the difference between a first period lesson and a fourth period one (on a Monday too).  My movement in the second recording was much better as well.  There was one point when I walked to the back of the room and planted myself in the corner.  I looked confident and in charge of my classroom.  I liked that.  I had more students help me do random things like passing out worksheets, but I still erased the board and tore down one of my activities myself.  It would have been nice to assign a student to do it, but I was up at the board already so I figured I’d just do it myself.  In my second recorded lesson, I spent too much time on guided practice which resulted in not enough time for them to adequately do independent practice.  There was one activity that, in retrospect, I should have completely cut out.  It wasn’t really that beneficial and it just wasted time.  As much as this whole recording ourselves and watching it sucked, it was beneficial, and I’m glad we did it.  One of the more painful activities will be re-watching these videos a year or two years from now.  I hope I can handle it.  The horror might be too great.

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