My First Microteaching!

In observing myself through a “teachers lens”, I noticed certain things about myself that I would like to better as a teacher. First off, after the first microteaching experience, I automatically knew what I did wrong as well as what skills of mine I would like to sharpen. In standing in front of the classroom, I noticed I approached this lesson more as a “senior seminar presentation” as opposed to actually teaching a lesson, and so next time I would like to be more “organized” in what I am teaching not presenting.

            The five minutes of “highlighted moments” I have chosen are scattered about in my twenty minute lesson. The first highlighted moment I chose was when I decided to have the class just shout out what words first come into their mind when they hear “bias”, “nationalism” or “Nazi Germany”.  When first preparing this lesson, I wasn’t sure how I would go about this, and I almost figured with just sticking to a worksheet and having the student’s write down their thoughts instead. After much thought, I realized…
how boring would that be? Twenty minutes of just writing and silence? No thanks. And so the reason I chose this moment in particular is because I steered away from my first thought and went about my lesson in a way where the students could just jump in and say whatever was on their mind.

            The second moment I chose was the class reading. Obviously I couldn’t expect my classmates to have read The Book Thief and know exactly what I was talking about, so prior to that I handed them a sheet of characters they should know and gave them prior knowledge of the scene they were to read. Again, I figured, instead of isolated reading, it would be more engaging and less tedious if the class read as a whole. After one of the readings, I had asked if the student’s understood what was going on at that point, and I appreciated that about myself to be honest, considering I tend to talk very fast, and when I get excited, ideas swarm in my head that I talk a mile a minute and I don’t even realize that other’s probably haven’t caught up to what I’m saying. My classmate, Tony, helped me with a “look” because prior to my microteaching, I had warned him about my tendency to talk too fast and how it must have developed in my years of being a conveniently quickly working barista, and so in the middle of my introduction, he gave me this look, which I believe helped click the idea in my mind to ask my students if they felt ready to continue along with the reading.

            Lastly, I’d have to say my third moment that I chose is my favorite. The last clip shows a class discussion— which I feel makes English Language Arts so engaging. What’s the point of reading something just to write about it, having only the teacher read it, or to just take a test on it? It’s always fascinating to hear the input of others and so being able to introduce an excerpt on a novel no one had read and still hear the student’s ideas flowing really made this microteaching lesson fun for me. Although I do believe I have a lot to work on as a future teacher, this experience helped me “sharpen” my skills more and plan ahead for Microteaching II. There’s more to teaching than just presenting and spilling out facts, and watching myself helped me to realize my strongest and weakest points for next time.