Tag Archives: teaching

A Busy Little Week

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Returning to campus from fall break means a return to friends and now-familiar routines. Unfortunately, it also means returning to a fresh batch of homework assignments (and ones put on hold during break). One look at my workload tonight, and you’ll be able to tell two things: that I’m an English major and that I’m a little overwhelmed at the moment. Tomorrow I have my first test of the semester for my grammar class, and I have a paper due in my rhetoric class. (Fortunately, the paper deadline got pushed back by a day, giving me more time to work on it. Unfortunately, that means I’m still working on it.)

Of course, I haven’t let the homework bog me down completely, as I kept busy with plenty of non-homework things yesterday too. After class, I went to West Middle School, a local middle school within walking distance from campus, where I volunteer once a week as an after-school tutor for kids who want or need extra help with their homework. I’ve been involved in this since last fall, and I have not only enjoyed it but I have also learned a lot about myself and working with people who are younger than me.

Later in the evening, I went to Honors Around the World, an event sponsored by the Honors Club at which students of the Honors Program talked about their experiences studying abroad. It was great to hear about some of my friends’ and peers’ travels to Costa Rica, Budapest, Spain, Ghana, and other places. I was especially glad to hear Mara talk about her experience in Glasgow, Scotland, since I would like to study abroad there in 2014. McDaniel’s Honors Program is part of a special partnership with the University of Glasgow that lets honors students from select U.S. institutions study at Glasgow. I think it’s a pretty awesome opportunity, and I can’t wait to experience it myself next spring!

And before I hit the books last night, I helped the Free Press, our student newspaper, distribute copies of our latest print issue in my residence hall. Our print issues have been looking fantastic this year, and I highly recommend that you track a copy down if you visit campus. Whether you’re interested in journalism or not, looking at colleges’ student newspapers is a great way to learn more about the campus and find out what students care about.

The October issue of the McDaniel Free Press, featuring McDaniel ROTC cadets

Despite being only three days long, this week has been one of my busiest little weeks in recent memory. (The fact that we don’t get a lot of short weeks on campus can also account for that.) I’m definitely looking forward to this week coming to a close! After my grammar test, I’m heading home again to take care of things I didn’t get to over fall break and to spend more time with my family. (Fall break will never be long enough for me!)

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A New Experience

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On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to teach an 80-minute lesson at the school I am currently interning at, Manchester Valley High School.  Even though I was confident in the lesson that I had written for my students, I was still really nervous.  I had never taught a class for 80 minutes before.  Not to mention, I was given the task of teaching this lesson to a class I had only met once before, simply because they were the students that were ready for my lesson.  How did I know that they would actually pay attention to me for that long?  Did I have enough for them to do to fill all 80 minutes?  Would they like my lesson?

I designed a lesson on Thinking Maps and Patterns of Text, with the help and guidance of my wonderful mentor teacher.  For those of you that don’t know, Thinking Maps are graphic organizers that are useful to students when reading different types of texts.  They help the students with their reading comprehension and note-taking skills, so my mentor teacher and I felt like our students needed to learn these things in their Freshman Seminar class.

The coolest thing about teaching the lesson for the entire mod was that I ran the class from start to finish.  I stood at the door and welcomed my students in to the classroom, gained their attention once the bell rang, and reminded them that they had a large homework assignment due on Friday.  I reminded them that there were things projected on the Good Day slide (something my mentor teacher does to let the students know what they should take out before instruction starts) and that they needed to get those things out so that we could start the lesson.  Then, we dove right into the lesson full force and the students listened to what I said, took notes, and participated.  I’ve always been really scared that I’m going to get up in front of the classroom, ask a question, and all of the students are going to stare at me like deer in headlights, but that didn’t happen.  Luckily, there were a few students in the class that were very eager to participate and kept raising their hand every time I asked a question.  Teaching the lesson from start to finish was a fantastic experience and it was really great to have those moments where I could tell that my students understood what I was saying.  After sitting here for two hours grading their classwork assignments, I know that the information that I was giving them sunk in, at least long enough for them to complete their classwork.  I can’t wait to see how my students use these skills to enhance their reading comprehension and note-taking in the future!  Not to mention, this makes me even more excited for my student teaching next semester, since I’ll get to do things like this every single day!

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