First Day of School

While I was originally planning for my First Day of School lab, I thought that it really wasn't going to be a really challenging task.  I knew that I had to go over my Classroom Expectations, Procedures, and Consequences, as well as get to know the students.  However, as the time began to get closer, I found myself getting more and more nervous.  I had ran through my little lesson in my head over a dozen times, but I still felt inadequately prepared when I stepped in front of my peers to give the lesson. 

The very first thing I noticed was that I said "okay" about a million times.
 "okay, so today we are going to...," "Okay, good, now we are going to...," "So those are my expectations for you, Okay?" 
I was horrified that it kept coming out of my mouth, but it just seemed to be my go to word of the day!  I learned that I need to be more cognitively focused on what I want to say next, so that I don't start using filler words such as okay.  If I had developed better transition questions to ask, I would have eased into my different topics much smoother.

As I stammered my way through my lesson, I also found myself stuck in the same place for a large majority of the time.  I believe that the best way to keep the students engaged is to stay engaged with them, and that is something that cannot always be done from the front of the classroom.  In the future I plan to try to be more actively aware of where I am and what I am doing while teaching.

While I was designing my lesson I wanted to do something to get the students up and moving.  I didn't want to have a normal first day of class where the students sat in their seats while I read my expectations to a wall of blank stares.  To try to add variety I asked the students to design a skit to act out one of my classroom expectations.  I think that the idea was great, however, I do not feel I executed it properly.  I wanted the kids to have a lot of energy and enthusiasm for this activity to really be fun, however, I didn't start the class with bursting enthusiasm on my end.  I see now that I cannot expect anything from my students that I am not willing to do either.  Why should they be excited about something that I obviously am not that excited about?  I could have changed the whole dynamic of my lesson if I had picked up my energy level from the very start.  I will challenge myself to remember that as I move forward both in this lab setting and then as I transition into my classroom!

Overall I learned a lot from this first experience teaching in front of my peers.  I was unsure of how life like this experience would be, but I am grateful that I am able to test the waters first with my peers before being thrown into the high school classroom!