Expectations

August 29, 2012

            I watched Mrs. P lead a discussion on the annotations of “Hotel California” for 3 periods today. What I found fascinating was that even by the 3^rd time she was hearing these interpretations, she acted like every single one was brand new to her. She offered to let me lead the discussion in the tiny 16-student AP class during 5^th period. It didn’t go like I imagined it would. I thought that choosing the tiny class would result in a good discussion because they all already knew each other and there was already a foundation of trust and respect. But they were just not into it at all, and it totally left me flabbergasted. The other 3 periods that did this activity (all over-crowded, with 40+ students) were very active in the conversation and seemed to enjoy it. But not when I lead it with 5^th period. Maybe I didn’t make it interesting enough. I heard laughter every time I turned my back to write something they said on the board. I made stupid spelling errors when I was writing on the board.  I’m not sure what else I did wrong. I felt pretty confident about the topic since I watched Mrs. P do it 3 times before.  It’s like the students couldn’t take what I had to say about it seriously. I asked Mrs. P what I did wrong. She said that I needed to explain why we did the activity and why it was useful to them. She's right...I did skip over this portion, mostly because I got flustered with how terribly the discussion was going.  I guess she heard a student mutter that annotations were pointless, so obviously discussing the “why” portion of this activity was more important in this period than the others…and naturally I messed it up. It makes me nervous for the future when I have to take over. Granted I will have the Honors classes, not the AP ones,  but still. I havne’t had a chance to work with the Honors kids yet and I hope that they enjoy the stuff I have planned for Beowulf. I am not a master in this piece of literature, and I am going to try my best to make sure it does not show. Maybe they will be kinder than the AP kids, though I can’t blame them for their disgust…because I remember having a student teacher for a period when I was in AP English my junior year of high school…and she botched her lesson too. The AP kids have high expectations of their instructors, and I just didn’t meet them today, I guess. I’m not letting it get me down or letting it discourage me. I’m just disappointed that it didn’t go as well as I had seen it go in my head.  Oh well. Tomorrow is a new day. Week one is half over.  Only 15 and a half more weeks to go!