My Teaching Experience from Student to Professional with Lesson Plans

“A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary”. - Thomas Carruthers

I tried to be more of a guide on the side today and have interactive material. In reality, though, this was mostly only true for the game!

Coming into the second week I realized I was way behind what I had originally planned. There was so much I hadn’t gotten to, so I had pushed everything back and though I was still making thorough lesson plans, I allowed for some flexibility in it and for the remainder of the overall schedule. I knew I wanted them to make a culminating invention having to do with some part of what we had learned, and that that could take some time.

We needed to get back into and go over the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty that they had started the K-W-L charts about. I found a video on Discovery Education’s United Streaming, and an article and I planned to have them fill out graphic organizers to answer the French question words. I even had a special organizer I made using a picture of the La Tour Eiffel I found on the web:

They might have showed more enthusiasm for this were it not first thing Monday morning. They were bored before we got to the second organizer on the Statue of Liberty (and I realize that is too much content to lump together- especially without having them do something more active), so I had to change plans a bit.

So we played French hangman (Le Pendu). It was great, they loved it, and it was a fun game that used their previous knowledge of all the vocabulary we had learned thus far. It went well, got them thinking and more importantly moving! so we could move class along. It was hard to get to the next activity because they were so into it, but that’s just how a game goes- children want to play games all day!

We did the routine putting info up and drawing on their maps. Then we did something else exciting- preparing questions for the real live French man who was going to come in the next day. I was so lucky that the other French teacher’s French husband said he would be willing to come into my class (he had come into her class one day and I observed and everyone loved it). So we brainstormed what we might ask him and I had them write two to three questions on a card and turn that in as their way out of class.

Overall it was a good day but I could still have them do more learning on their own and I also know now to start a Monday morning off with something active.

Exhaustion mainly comes to mind. I hesitate to say disappointment. One of the program advisers had a talk with me and she asked if I thought I was being too hard on myself. Hard thing for me to answer- maybe I’m being hard on myself, but I could be doing so much better. I know I procrastinate, but I haven’t had time to procrastinate during this program because every day a whole lot happens and I must carry out a thorough, well-planned lesson which never ends up the way I planned it (no matter how many hours it took me to rough draft).

There really are a million things to think about when you get into all the different levels of teaching. I can’t believe how many schools let teachers come in with only their content area degree and have no teaching experience.

I know that you can learn a lot from teaching itself, but the theory and methods I’ve gathered throughout these education courses is way more involved than just winging it. I know they will sometimes send teachers back to school to get a Masters or further learning, but I think it’d be better if everyone had a solid basic knowledge of educational pedagogy and instruction methods.

I’m glad I’m in the classroom, putting it into practice. There are a lot of requirements for this specific program, so it’s an extra dose of challenge and educational lessons. The students definitely teach me as much as I teach them. I just need to help them be so involved that they help me teach the content. As someone put it, and I really like this, you’re just there as a teacher to “be the guide on the side“. Facilitate learning and provide scaffolding and appropriate materials and activities, but let them do the work:

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand”~ Author unknown

All learning begins with the simple phrase, “I don’t know”. ~Anonymous

This is a phrase I should have used today “Je ne sais pas” (I don’t know). I gave some misinformation! I gave the wrong date for the Eiffel Tower at the end of class when a student asked to put it up on the invention timeline. I think it was about 15 years off and now I will definitely have to start class Monday by apologizing and correcting it. I had mixed up lesson plans again and am still altogether too too disorganized so I was flustered.

Having people observing you is tough as well. It was a French teacher that asked me about it after class. I should have said “I’ll get the date for you guys on Monday, I don’t have it for sure right now”. I will readily admit that I am not always right as a teacher and would dare to go as far as to let them know that teachers are not always right, nor do they know everything.

It was a fun day overall, but I had a lot of inner turmoil due to my lack of planning (despite the fact that I planned for between 5-7 hours the night before!) and the little bit of misinformation. The other day they asked the word for the color “tan” and I said I did not know, I told them what I remembered beige to be (I was right about that), and said I would look it up. Note to self- always have a dictionary handy in class! I found out there is not really a word in French for tan. They barely even use beige, so says a trusty source (he’s French).

We had a Powerpoint about French-speaking countries. We discussed what they did for 4th of July and I related it to Bastille Day in France. Then we made flags of a French-speaking country of their choice. But I was off again about the whole point of it, which is probably why I ended up crying in front of one of the program advisers.

I had problems with time-management with making the flags. I should have given them white paper instead of all construction paper as a base, I should have imposed stricter time limits. And then one person giving me feedback suggested maybe I should have just gotten more into the connections between Bastille Day and 4th of July.

They enjoyed making the flags as it was hands-on and engaging and I played the soundtrack to Amelie in the background. But this activity could have been done by 3rd graders.

I was just trying to have them do something fun and educational because it was Friday and near Bastille Day. Then I had to push them to finish, put them up, and we moved along to “La Tour Eiffel” and the “Statue of Liberty” which I had already pushed back a day. We started a K-W-L chart and did not get very far before class was over.

I had to readjust the plans with this section of the lesson as well, because there was no internet access because of a storm the day before! Woh is me, right?! Teaching is tough. I felt so bad, especially because I didn’t do a very good job summarizing what we learned all week so they’d go home and remember something come Monday.

So I cried. The stress of feeling like even though it was a fun day it still went poorly or I could have changed dozens of things, the fact that I had been getting between 3 and 5 hours of sleep a night, and not knowing how to manage my time with 72 minutes (that had once seemed like way too long of a class period and now was barely enough), all combined to make me feel lousy.

I had a talk with an adviser, and though I was embarrassed and it did seem a little too intimate (crying opens up these unprofessional doors that lead to personal conversations), he got me to recognize that every day of the week, I had felt better and better and felt the lessons really did go better each day.

It’s just a TON of things to think about: time and classroom management, instructional methods, content, student interest and motivation, and how to effectively manage them all and adapt and change every day based on feedback and reflection.

Thank goodness it’s the weekend. For some other co-teachers, it meant the beach or another quick getaway. For me, it did mean sleep, but also a long period of time to review and revise next weeks’ lesson plans!!!

“He who dares to teach must never cease to learn.” ~ Anonymous

Something fun I started off with was an activity I made up to help them use French, while learning about the idea of Braille. I made this activity for them to put glue dots on a piece of paper that spelled a word in French that we had learned in the first few days from our word wall. The night before, I had gone over the ones they did to make sure they were readable, and some of them would have been too tough (I think it was already a tough enough activity to feel glue dots to guess which word it was), so I made a few neat ones myself.

A little more than half of them guessed the correct word, but I suspect that a few may have peeked. It was a good intro into the idea of Braille, which was created by Louis Braille from France. One of the students had studied him and the subject before, so I asked him to share what he knew. He even had some information that I did not have in the lesson plan so that was really cool.

We filled out a graphic organizer based on some information. I read a paragraph to them and they had their eyes closed. Then they would say which question word or words the paragraph answered. It was a different way to have them learn information.

As usual, they put some Braille on the map of France and on the Invention Timeline. Although I do think this was a creative idea for the theme of the unit, I’m finding it very difficult to get in as much French as I would like. Not to mention in a way that makes logical sense to them. A lot of vocabulary and some grammar concepts as they come up, but not as much sequence or groups of ideas in French. Oh well- you can’t expect fluency after 9 days!

I had to adapt this day a bit because everything was pushed back. It’s better because it gives me a chance to get more in depth when dealing with some of the content. I have to remember to teach French words and verbs for the main inventions we’re dealing with. We are getting a lot of words on the word wall though. I was going to share the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty but will do that tomorrow when we discuss Bastille Day which is actually on July 14th!

“The work can wait while you show the child the rainbow, but the rainbow won’t wait while you do the work.” ~ Patricia Clafford

We learned about ‘le crayon’, how the French created the modern pencil. It was because Napoleon did not want France to depend on England for graphite, so Nicholas Conte ground up graphite into a powder, mixed it with clay, and inserted it into wooden holders. This way they did not use nearly as much graphite; this was also the start of the modern pencil.

We put up a picture of a pencil along with the date on the Invention Timeline. I also had them draw one on their map of France so they can get an idea of some of the important cities in France.

I feel that my methods are a little random. Having the “Invention” theme is good, because they are interested in knowing how things work. But it may have been simpler just to have a theme like “A Star Voyage Around France”. I have “star inventors and inventions” as my connection to the theme of “Reach for the Stars”.

Again things were taking much longer than I had expected. We filled out a graphic organizer answering the question words in French.

Then I connected pencils to colors and we moved on to Hot Air Balloons, les Montgolfieres, also created by the French. We learned the colors in French and made hot air balloons with various colors.

Next, I used a classic teacher secret weapon for learning- candy! I had Starburst and lollipops and made them say what color they wanted. This worked very well, of course everyone started raising their hand, and many of them more than once.

And next thing I new it, class was over. I introduced them to ‘goodbye’ vocabulary and will have to review it again for day 4 and the rest of the days.

The best part of it was that they learned some good information and French vocabulary, and they had fun. There was hands-on, multisensory learning. There is still way too much room for improvement on my part, but I felt better about today than I did about the other days.

“A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove . . . . but the world maybe different because I was important in the life of a child.” ~ Kathy Davis

I was reflecting as I worked on my unit plan rough drafts (also a period lacking the majority of the sleep i should have been getting) about the fact that I actually must want to be a teacher. Sure, people might say they want to be a teacher or think they want to be a teacher and not realize. Oh the work behind even a decent lesson.

Day Two- the bicycle. My unit is on French inventions and inventors and I am trying to show them how the French have helped us out, and also get in some French vocabulary and grammar. And I have to work with a theme: “Reach for the Stars” and try and relate that to every last piece of information we deal with.

I had them do a graphic organizer when we learned about the invention of the first bicycle. I forgot to tell them the hilarious story of me learning to ride a bike by being pushed down a hill and simply being told to pedal (it eventually worked, but not without minor injury).

We started to write on the word wall (where we put up new French words we have learned). I also had them draw a bike on a map of France and we put it up on the “Les Inventions en Histoire” (Inventions in History) timeline.

I incorporated the questioning words- who, what, why, where, when and how and had them do an activity with that.

Then we talked a little bit about Le Tour de France. I showed an educational video about it and had them answer the question words.

So how did all of it go? Okay. They were interested in some parts more than others, and as I learned from day One, they take quite a bit of prompting and probing to contribute thoughtfully. And since I am new at this, and excessively nervous, I am unable to get into using wait-time to allow for them to think, process, and to allow more students to come up with answers.

After observing other classes I realize that Day Two did not involve enough active, hands-on type learning. They were engaged, but not as motivated as I would have liked.

But I got through it. Teaching first thing is nice because they’re not wide-awake enough to be rowdy. Yet…

“Experience is the worst teacher; it gives the test before presenting the lesson.” ~ Vernon Law

If this is the case, I may not have passed the first days’ class exam. There I was, in front of a truly diverse group of 15 middle-schoolers, and they sat there assessing me, while I wondered if they knew I did not have any idea of what was going on. Maybe I had some idea, but I lacked all kinds of adequate preparation. Procrastination is my best friend and worst enemy; in planning for this 2-week practicum, I found that procrastination was no longer (after more than 20 years of experience with it and academics) an option.

Every day takes a lot of time.

A lot of planning.

A good teacher not only knows their content (French in my case), but they know how to theoretically teach it, and they work on actually executing it effectively.

I have a lot more to say, but no time to say it, for I am weary, and must go plan day 3.

I should have started off by providing all sorts of information about the practicum, but organization is not my strong suit, and I am quickly learning how important it is to make sure you logically sequence everything in teaching!

The Summer Practicum is part of a required Education course for my Secondary Education Masters to obtain my teaching certificate. (My certification will be in French specifically).

To quote Wikipedia (a source teachers are supposedly not supposed to use):

“A practicum is a college course, often in a specialized field of study, that is designed to give students supervised practical application of a previously studied theory. Practicums are common for education majors.”

I have no discrepancies with that definition (it’s better than I would have said it). Basically we just spent 5 weeks planning a 9-day, 72-minute-class-period unit that incorporates the theme “Reach for the Stars”.

The students are coming to this Summer “Enrichment” Program not because they did poorly in school, but because it is a fun way to learn (I’m sure most of their parents coerce them to go, but I have already seen in the first few days that they really do enjoy it).

They are middle-schoolers from all over Philadelphia, from a wide range of backgrounds, and most are between 11 and 13.

I teach first period from about 9:10-10:20am everyday, and then observe other teachers in the second and third period, and receive feedback on my teaching during the rest of the day as well. There is a short break called “advisory” where the students have a snack before 3rd period, and we watch them closely to make sure they are not misbehaving or getting too close (oh the budding romance of pre/adolescents).

If you have one of these practicums- do not take it lightly. They don’t call ours “boot camp” for nothing. We have to arrive by 8am, have a faculty meeting at 8:30, and go meet the students in the lobby at 9. They are only at the camp from 9-1 (four hours) but those four hours can feel like 8 or 10 depending on how the day goes.

As you read my blog, you’ll see that the toll it has taken on me is not just physical (from the long day of working and teaching), but mental (with the unbelievable amount of time it takes me to reflect, re-plan, and re-adjust the whole unit every night), and emotional too (I am way too sensitive about the feedback I receive. I can view it objectively, but combined with the exhausted and overworked state I keep being in throughout the week, it all combines to make me feel like quitting). It takes a toll on every part of you.

But every day I get more out of it than I might have imagined I would get out of the whole two weeks! It’s worth it. Because it can help you see that you either want to be a teacher, and it will help you know how much work it can be, or conversely, it will show you that teaching is not for you. As I go through it I feel both sides of this, and as my adviser told me- wait. Wait until this is over to even begin to collect my thoughts on that subject.

So there you have a brief and simultaneously rambly definition of a practicum (it’s obviously my definition, because I make words like rambly up)