My First Lesson

Tuesday was a big day for me. Heck, this whole week was big for me, but Tuesday was a day that I was extremely nervous for, but also a day that I was very excited for at the same time. It was the day that I was going to teach my first official lesson! In high school I was in the Ready-Set-Teach program where every other morning I got to go back to my kindergarten days and work with a class at my old elementary school. I would help them with their writing, or they would read to me, and without fail, every day when it was time for me to leave, the students would tackle me in a hug and make me feel so loved and appreciated. There is nothing quite like that childlike love!

Two kids from the kindergarten class I worked with on the 100th Day of School!

I am enrolled in a class called UTL101, which is code for UTeach Liberal Arts 101, which is the first step in the teacher certification process. We start out in an elementary school, then our next step will be going to a middle school, and then I will be in a high school the semester before I begin my student teaching. Crazy!Basically, for UTL101, I go to an elementary school classroom once a week and observe the teacher and her class for an hour. I take notes on behavior management, how she conducts lessons, the way she determines if the students are learning the material and so on. Well, as part of this class, we also have to teach THREE lessons! I had to come up with a lesson plan of my own and teach a 45-minute lesson to these students! Talk about nerves! It was great though because the students were absolutely great and they made me feel so loved. I had the students read the story "A Home for Nat," and we identified and defined the highlighted words. I also taught them about inferencing, and they made inferences about the story that we just read. They did great! They definitely made me look good!

The poster I made to introduce the lesson

The students asked me if I was going to teach them every day.. one lesson every few weeks is enough for me right now! I honestly think the reason my lesson was so successful is because I have had a great teacher to model myself after. She does a great job with the kids and I have already learned so much in five short weeks.  I had so much fun teaching my first lesson, and although I have had some doubts lately about whether or not I really want to be a teacher, this definitely reinforced my desire to be a teacher and interact with students to hopefully make a difference in their lives the way some of my teachers made a difference in mine. Two teachers that had a huge impact on my high school career:

Dave Avis - aka Mr. Teacher. He was my physics teacher for both my junior and senior years of high school

Jenny Adcock - aka Coach A, one of the best volleyball coaches there is!