Phew, glad that is over....

So today was my first of many days that I was to be observed by my supervisor and video-tape my class. I must admit I was very nervous about today and how it would go, but overall I am pretty happy with it. Today was a big day for review, because I am giving my students their first test of the term so I had to make sure I provided an opportunity to review a lot of the key concepts that will be covered on tomorrow's test. Review days are hard, because it is not new material, so the students sometimes are not as focused or willing to participate because they have seen the material already. So I created two review sheets. One was a conversion handout to help them practice converting millimeters to micrometers and micrometers to millimeters, the other handout was a crossword puzzle. I had them work on the conversion sheet first, which didn't go as smoothly as I had anticipated. The students had a lot of questions, so I was moving from student to student trying to help them. Most of the time they just didn't know the answer off the top of their head and wanted my help, but when I talked it through with them, asking them questions, they realized they did know how to do it, they just had to walk through the steps to get to the answer. Once this started to happen I felt a little better. My first thought was OH NO, this isn't going well, but in the end it worked out okay. So once they got through the conversion chart and moved on to the crossword puzzle things seemed to move along well. They seemed to actually enjoy it and didn't have too many questions. So overall I think these worksheets helped them prepare for their test and were a great first observation for my supervisor because I had a lot of interactions with my students, which I enjoy. After class was over, my supervisor and I met and he asked what I thought I did well in today's lesson and what I thought I needed to work on. After we discussed this, he broke down what he thought I did well and made a few suggestions as to how I could make what I was doing better. So overall, I thought a really good first meeting, took some of the pressure off. As far as the video-taping goes, we have to video-tape ourselves teaching every two weeks and then have to view the video and critique ourselves. We had to do this over the summer as well, and though none of us looked forward to this, I always found it to be really helpful. I was able to see more clearly what I did do well and little things I could do better or try to avoid.

Yesterday I gave my first test, which we did a lot of review for. I was even a little nervous for the students, because they seemed stressed out over the idea of the test. Even though this test was only 10 more questions that the last quiz. Anyways, I was overall fairly pleased with the outcome.

Something that I am currently planning that is in the works, is the Urban Roundtable seminar. This was something that was started last year per the request of a now UGC grad, that was placed in an inner city school district. She wanted the opportunity to hear stories and get advice of teachers who teach in these districts and to be able to talk to her classmates that were going through the same experiences. This year, myself and a fellow classmate, Tricia, were asked to plan this discussion that will be held one Friday every month for an hour in the later afternoon. Our job is to recruit teachers in Urban districts, book the room, invite our classmates and then run the evening. We are currently trying to get the first event planned, so wish us luck! I think it will be a great opportunity to hear from the experts, experiences they have had, and how they dealt with it and handle obstacles they handle on a daily basis. Plus, it will be a nice time to catch up with our classmates and counts towards our required Professional Development.
Anyhow, glad it is Thursday and the weekend is around the corner. So far so good, looking forward to relaxing a little this weekend.