second day, first day of teaching

Got to school around 8.

Today was the first day I actually taught a lesson. I found teaching for two hours consecutively to be pretty challenging. Classroom management wasn't too bad in the VAP class today. One of the girls wasn't really into the lesson and didn't participate at all, but she wasn't bothering any of the other students so it was ok.

I definitely didn't feel as though I was prepared for the lesson, but I got through it ok. I felt bad for Lauren, because working off of someone else's lesson plan can be pretty difficult, particularly when it's not exactly "drop-dead". Teaching the lesson the way it was on paper, there probably would have been

Today I learned that you have to be able to adapt. Not that I didn't know that before, but this is the first time I've actually had to adapt during a lesson to adapt to the students I was teaching. Some things were stretched out more, and there was more emphasis on group work, recapping, and hands-on, games-type activities. I also learned how to use the photocopier. Copiers can hole punch? Cool beans. I want one.

The parts of the lesson that I felt went well? There was a matching-type exercise as well as a game at the end that went fairly well. The game was based on the minimum wage. Questions were in the format of "Is Quebec's minimum wage higher or lower than (either another province or dollar figure" Examples were used from various provinces. It was great to see some critical thinking when the two teams would try to rationalize their answers. For example, one girl made the great oberservation: "Maybe Quebec's minimum wage is lower because they have a lot more people to pay."

Economics in action!

Today Lauren and I met with Marg, our faculty advisor. She seems nice and pretty laid-back. She's going to be back on Friday to observe us teaching. It should be a good time.

The only thing I would change about today is that I forgot to bring my lunch to school.

Next week it looks like we'll be taking over an ELA 20 class, possibly for the whole week. I imagine we'd still being doing lessons in the afternoon with the VAP class.

Left at 4:15.