Making Magic

Magical.  The one word I would use to describe this week that has just passed.  I was able to teach 5 of my own lessons to my period 3 honors seniors, as well as continue to co-teach my CT's 10th grade classes.  This is what I had been working so hard for over the past couple of years.  This week, this moment, has finally come and gone and I could not feel better about it all.  Pure magic.

Luckily for my TP and I, our CT has allowed us to take part in teaching her classes since our very first week in Burrillville High.  She wanted us to test out our skills in a real classroom with real students and we were beyond grateful for such a fantastic and significant opportunity.  It took a great deal of trust and risk giving her classroom over to a couple of practicing teachers, but fortunately we didn't let her down. Thank goodness!

Since we had been co-teaching majority of our CT's classes with her each week, we were able to create bonds and relationships with our students very early on in our practicum experience.  This made it much easier for us to teach our own lessons for a week straight because the students knew us, respected us, and felt comfortable with us.  Our period 3 seniors truly were very special kids and I honestly don't think we could have been given a better group of kids.

Monday's class consisted of introducing our students to the play Everyman through the vehicle of a "Tea Party", where each student was given a character to embody and they had to guess which classmates were which characters from the play.  This concept caused a great deal of confusion, since the students so quickly pointed out that we had not read the play yet.  My TP and I realized we should have better explained the idea of allegory to them and tried to further explain that the character's names were literally what they were.  With this clarification, the students understood much better and the tea party went great! I was so impressed with how creative my students were with their characters (Beauty said he loved to look at himself in the mirror and walked around with a distinct air of confidence).  Loved it!

The following two days consisted of reading the play and showing the students a video adaptation with legos on youtube that helped them better understand the basis of the play.  They were struggling with the archaic language, so my TP and I provided them with a word bank to help them better understand what was being said.

Thursday was the big day that our professor came to observe us in action and our kids definitely did not let us down! We started off the lesson with a video of Dr. Seuss's Star Bellied Sneetches to show allegory and metaphor because the kids were still trying to grapple the idea in the play.  They offered great examples from the video and we decided it was time to start talking about their discussion questions they had for homework.  First we placed them into smaller groups of 5 or 6 to talk with each other about them to get their ideas out in the open and fill in anyone who was absent the day before (there was a field trip). Once we moved into larger discussion in the extra room our CT had coined the "salon" (there were comfortable chairs and a calming atmosphere), students from each group wrote "talking points" (areas they struggled with, wanted to discuss further, or felt strongly about) up on the board and our discussion began.  My TP and I could not have been happier with the results!  These kids were just so smart and willing to talk about the themes and concepts of the play.  My TP and I just need to learn to say less and let them say more (we were just so excited), but that is something we are both going to work on!

Friday finished up the week with group adaptations of the play and they were a range of funny, clever, and gangster (yes, gangster).  The kids showed that they not only understood the concept of the play as well as the characters, but they also had fun with it and showed their creativity! It was a teacher candidate's dream come true.

Overall, I could not have asked for a better experience at Burrillville High School and I am beyond sad that at 11 am on Friday I had to leave them.  We had created bonds with so many of them (many of them asked if we would come back to visit) and it was so hard to say goodbye!  They taught us so much more than we could have ever taught them and for that I am forever grateful!  During this month spent inside the walls of their school, these kids have taught me who I am as a person, mentor, and educator and I learned more in this short period of time than my entire RIC career! I now am fully aware of my strengths and weaknesses as a teacher and cannot wait to progress in my journey as an educator and fine tune my instruments along the way!