AEE 412 RTL 8/26/15

Wow it is here fall semester 2015!  Summer was a blast, but nothing can last forever.  I have looked forward to coming back to good ol’ State and get back into my college routine one last time.  I have looked forward to coming back and hanging out with friends and especially my other Ag. Ed majors for one last time as a cohort before we go off to student teach!

Today was a first of many firsts!  I did my first RTL lesson.  At first I was like what is this?  Then I got a bit frustrated when I didn’t know how I was going to teach my peers about the parts of a medieval castle in just fifteen short minutes!  I sat down gave it some thought and my inspiration came from a classic movie a favorite of mine The Dirty Dozen!  While my lesson was by no means one hundred percent successful, I took many key points from it both positive and negative.  I cannot begin to tell you how excited I was when I finally knew what I was going to do for my lesson.  Now I know that feeling teachers have when the light bulb comes on!  With that I felt very confident and was pumped to present my lesson.  Although when Wednesday morning came and I began watching my peers I became a little intimidated and felt maybe I was not completely prepared to present my lesson.  It was too late to turn back now and what is the worse that could happen if it goes wrong and it is just a learning moment of many I have already had and will have.  So I took the bull by the horns and gave it my all when my time came. 

I think that for my first RTL teaching a lesson it went well.  I was discouraged somewhat after I left class, but as the day went on I just told myself it was only a learning moment and can build off of it from there.  I felt for the most part I was prepared.  There were a few parts about who was handing out the material to give to students that messed me up.  I felt for the most part I made up for it on the spot and did my best with what I had.  I certainly feel I had definite concrete objectives for my students.  This lesson presented its challenges and one part that made me super excited about my lesson was the interaction the students would have while learning the material I had presented to them about medieval castles.  I think I had my student’s attention and kept them engaged.  Although, I did not have much discussion or stimulated thinking I kept their curiosity with my silly poem and picture of a medieval castle with all the structural components on the television.  I tried my darndest to make sure my students were able to summarize the parts of a medieval castle. I would give myself a grade of maybe 70%.

For the most part it was fun to get up and teach my peers.  Little intimidating, but we’re all in this together and aren’t going to throw each other under the bus.  I absolutely loved teaching in an informal setting this summer with extension.  Watching myself teach there were components I need to work on and parts I was able to say “hey I didn’t do as bad as I thought!”  When I handed out my test and the answers were there on the second sheet.  Boy did that really make me look stupid, but I collected them quick and instead of standing there freaking out not know what to do for my students so that they could complete my quiz.  I hastily went to the white board and gave them a word bank.  I was impressed by myself on the ability to think on the fly.  Probably, if I was teaching this to students and they went home to tell their parents about their day they would have said you should of seen the joke of a teacher we had today.  At the same time I hope they would realize I was prepared, tried my hardest to teach them the material with what I had, and that they would want to come back for another fun day with the guy who says a lot of umms… and needs to work on that! Hahaha!