My Teaching Experience from Student to Professional with Lesson Plans

If you’re a teacher, I’d bet at least half of the schools have something like this. Back to School Night. My good friend who is teaching at the school with me said it was her least favorite night of the year, which really scared me, but I prepared what I wanted to say and do, and I think that was key. As one of my other “colleague friends” put it- it’s going to happen whether or not you’re nervous. I did get nervous, but I tried to calm myself by thinking of how quickly it would pass, and how prepared I was.

I do feel prepared, even though my last post said I was nowhere near ready. I am intrinsically prepared because of my education background, and I have a lot of good skills I took from student teaching. However, the unfortunate part is the language levels are not clear-cut, and I’m not just talking about individual student variation. I’m talking about not knowing what level the French 3’s are at, and knowing that the French 2’s will be “behind” in some ways, and it confuses me and scares me.

Now I’m off topic. But back to school night went well overall- the parents came through their child’s schedule- to 10 minute mini-classes. I decided to have them introduce themselves in French “Bonjour, je m’appelle…” and then I introduced myself and talked about my French and Education background. Next, I passed out a super-abridged version of my syllabus and talked about my overall course goals.

In a lot of classes the time passed quickly and there was no time left for questions. I felt pretty good, and felt much better after one of the students whose parents I know well called me to tell me they thought it went very well.

There were a few good, almost challenging questions. For example: “Is this course going to be like French 1.5?” because of the French 1 last year getting behind. I answered that no, I was considering it French 2 and would start with review and catch-up and then move forward. That’s the hard part that got me off track a few paragraphs ago- there will be a lot of additional work for me to do if I don’t effectively figure out how to catch them up using the book and the resources I do have. I spent too much time student teaching formatting and creating single handouts I should have had provided for me.

So, to conclude my view on Back to School Night, I say- it’s all in how you view it. Keep it in perspective and think of it as a way for you to show the parents what you expect from their kids, and what you are going to help their kids do. I showed the fun and think I did a good job showing I’m serious and I’m working from a good basis. Sure I felt a little young, but I think it’s the specific school (because I know a lot of the parents and they knew me when I was just a youngin’).

There were even some fun parts, and I enjoyed when the parents would speak a little of the French they knew to humor me. And, of course, I had some French music playing in the background. Multiple intelligences!

The Good News: School is about to start, I am excited, and the minutes will continue to tick-tock on the clock. Whether I like it or not, the first day will come, and after that it won’t stop moving- day after day. I have some fun activities planned and I am really excited to have my own classroom and to be at such a great school.

The Not-As-Good-News: I am happy to say I’ve already got approval for getting some French praise stickers, and things could be much worse. But I don’t have a Smartboard like I thought I was going to! Not yet, at least. And a laptop was ordered, but the I.T. department is too busy to get it to me right now. Alas, at least there is the hope of technology! So I have to plan around that, and keep in mind, I really don’t know what level some of these students will be at.

The Bad News: I still don’t have a key to my office. I feel like a nomad carrying six bags here and there every day.

I know that every school would have its ups and downs and until I know the ins and outs here, well, I’ll just hold my breath.

Overall, as I said, the time will come, whether I am ready or not. So why am I still so anxious!?!

Oh, maybe it’s the holding my breath?!

It has not been easy for me to decide what to put on my syllabus and what to leave out. Of course I want to include as much as possible, but right now I’m looking at 2 pages full of information and I will not let it run onto 3. Figuring out my focus and goals for the course has been a good process, and a fun challenge. I want to express that I care about the students learning not just the language, but the culture and other parts of it- and I hope that we will learn in ways that everyone can enjoy.

Multiple intelligences are big for me, and I want to teach and have activities in all areas so that students who learn better this way or that way will have instruction and experiences in their preferred learning style, and they will get a chance to strengthen their areas of learning difficulty.

It’s also hard to know what to do with the upper levels, as I’ve talked to last years’ French teachers, and they say the students might not be where I’d expect them to be (French 2’s didn’t get to past tense, etc.)

I want to go over coursework and grading, but not too much. And I have a whole paragraph on cheating. I suppose there are some things I could go over and reword or group better to make it shorter. In the end I think it is better to lay more of it out there to begin, because students will say “That wasn’t in the syllabus!

Hopefully I will get that Smartboard in my classroom before school starts so I can complement going over the syllabus with a nice Powerpoint presentation. But who knows- I still don’t even have akey to my own office!

Wish me luck (now I’m going to search on the internet for other teachers’ syllabi and input)!

I’m getting excited about teaching, but also nervous about feeling unprepared. The best way to help this would be doing more “prep”. But it’s tough to do without a computer of any sort in my office, and without keys! The behind-the-scenes getting myself moved into the school involves a lot more emails and requests and details than I would have thought. I guess it’s a good lesson in taking charge and NOT PROCRASTINATING.

Procrastinating is a lot of what I’ve been doing. I told myself I would prepare and plan all of August, but I moved into a new apartment, and I have been working on getting this and that (I have keys to my classroom, but not my office yet), and I end up making a lot of excuses.

A teacher today did tell me that the students will probably be far behind what I think (as far as level of language mastery thus far goes) so that gives me more of an excuse to put off planning.

I guess the best idea would be to continue to acquaint myself with the material, and to finalize my syllabus. I do not think I’m going to include specific dates on the syllabus- just overall general coursework. I don’t want to do all that guess work and then have the kids get upset when the dates don’t match up.

I have a teacher planner that I bought at Office Depot (I believe it was there) and I think it will help with planning.

The next step to conquer is propelling my brain and motivation into gear, because time is flying by and September will come knocking soon enough.

For privacy and safety sake, I am not going to say exactly where, but I did get a job. And it was after holding out for full-time (they had offered me half-time and I turned it down earlier this Summer). It is a private religiously-affiliated high school with excellent students and a great faculty. I even know a few people teaching there (it’s very close to where I live), so that will help me feel more comfortable during my first year.

I went to a few interviews, sent out lots of interest to different schools, and had a few nibbles on the line but no real deals. I did get a call last week from a high school sounding almost desperate for me to come in for an interview. I guess it was almost August.

Of my friends and other student teacher colleagues, I’d say about half have a job lined up, 25% are still looking, and 25% I haven’t really heard from. It’s not as easy as you’d think- even with a Masters! I think it’s the economy right now.

Overall, I’m very excited and looking forward to starting planning and getting prepared. I have a lot of flexibility in the instruction and it means two things- yay for that freedom and opportunity, but, also, lots of work and a bit of pressure to up the quality of their French program.

I’ll write more as I have more meetings and orientations and such. I am supposed to be getting some mentoring, but I’m not sure about how or when. I am very thankful for my student teaching experience!