First day of teaching, all over again.

[bookaddict88]

Well, I started teaching math today. Let’s just say, my improving skills at reading comprehension didn’t transfer over well. I failed pretty miserably today at teaching my kids to identify subtraction questions in word problems. It was a difficult objective (particularly for students who have trouble reading), my students were behind where I thought they’d be skill-wise, I was disorganized, and I really had no clue how to teach a math lesson. I was all over the place, which meant my kids were all over the place, both academically and behaviorally (though at least “bad” behavior for them isn’t really that bad). To make matters worse, I was incredibly nervous during the lesson because I was being observed by both my CMA and by another CM who wanted to learn something from the way I taught. I think the only thing the other CM learned was how not to teach math.

Still, despite the fact that I was pretty upset after the lesson, I’m a lot more optimistic than I was after my first real day of teaching. My first reading comprehension was a disaster (though not quite this bad, I think!), but I learned from it, and was doing much better by the second week. I’m hopeful that my math lessons will similarly improve, so that I don’t fail so much in front of my students this fall!

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Teacher's nightmare--you have my complete and profound sympathy.