. . Try, Try, Again. . . if if that doesn't work; Cut & Paste

I feel sorriest for my Monday students. All last semester I would walk in on Monday with a set of lesson plans and at least one of them would fail miserably. The epic looks of confusion on student's faces would be all the evidence I need that whatever I was teacher or working on would need some serious revision. I each time this happened I would go back to the office (or back home if I didn’t have time) and revised the whole lesson. Sometimes I would trash it and start from scratch.

It looks like this time around I’m going to have the same issues.

Yesterday I had two lessons blow up in my face in a colossal pile of crap. I felt bad because I worked hard on them. I’ve been doing a lot better with my planning (at least I thought I was) and I really wanted to do well. I asked my co-teacher about both of them and the second year teacher, Mrs. Kim, gave me some good ideas to go with. The overall issue it seemed was that I was giving too much information but not explaining it correctly. For me, this is a tough situation because I sometimes feel like my co-teachers don’t always explain what they ask for. I can’t put the blame on them however; I don’t always ask questions. I pledged that this wouldn’t be the case in this semester because I felt I really mailed it in a few times last winter. This time, I asked both my co-teachers for suggestions and I went home and went to work. I even showed them the revisions this morning. Ms. Jeoung (unmarried) explained that I had a lot of good information, but it was too much.

I ended up cutting things down and revising my power points. It cost me some sleep, but I was much happier with the results. The students seemed to pay attention and at least understand the basics of what I said. I realize many of them don’t really care either way, but if I get the majority of their attention then I can’t complain.

I have to admit, I feel that sometimes my lesson plans are the result of my ambition combined with frustration. I sometimes assume the level for my students is way higher than it actually is. Ms. Jeoung tends to tell me to keep in mind that the students don’t know as much as I think they do. SOME do, but I often take for ranted the things a lot of things implied that someone who is native would understand. The frustration is a combination of my impatience along with laziness. If I get caught under the gun, I don’t out as much effort into the work. It results in some rather poor lesson work. As I said before, I’m working on it all this time. I’m still learning a lot about what to do and how to do it.