My Microteaching Experience

 After 3 days of 90-minute classroom instruction, I was able to experience almost absolute failure, to a great comeback, to a final amazing lesson. I found this experience so helpful for me as it allowed me to experiment in a real classroom with real students and gave me a great setting to really understand how next spring is going to go.

               How did this experience start out on the wrong foot?

I walked in Monday afternoon with my head held so high, my lesson plan in hand, expecting a flawless lesson. It was going so well until about 20 minutes in, we had just finished my interest approach and I looked down at my lesson plan and noticed that what I had on paper was not making sense to me. All the planning and prep I had done before walked right out the door on me and I was lost and circling for answers and got very nervous. Instead of struggling and suffocating for the next 70 minutes, I decided to come clean with my students. I told them the truth, but that we weren’t going to give up. So, we all spent the rest of the class working through the slideshow that I had prepared together. I knew I wanted them to go outside so that we could try out the Biltmore stick before we did the activity on Wednesday. In the second half of class, we all went outside, and I was able to walk them through how to use the stick properly they were all able to practice till the end of class and got comfortable with it.

               The comeback story begins…

Wednesday, I walked in slightly nervous because I did not want to repeat Monday. I spent all day Tuesday brainstorming and changing my plans so that I could redo what we missed on Monday and also create an interactive and fun activity where they could go outside and work through a worksheet as an actual forester. It went amazing. Everything went exactly how I wanted it to, the students did so well and enjoyed it the entire time. They were very participatory and excited about the content, which made my job a lot easier.

               The big finale!

Friday we were switching up gears. We transferred from forestry to water quality as they were preparing their trout tank for their fish that were coming in a few weeks. I made an inquiry lesson for this day, which included an activity where they were to test multiple different water samples and determine which ones were not safe for fish. The students loved this and participated really well and we had a great discussion at the end of class.

 

               So, what’s next?

After this experience, I have realized that trial and error is okay and that as teachers we are learning to and that includes how we prepare and deliver lessons. It’s okay to fail, we all fall down, but it’s how you get back up that sets you away from the rest. To me I saw the best option was to come clean to the students and have them help me work through the day, I understand that is not always the best option, but I am learning to,o and next time I may react differently once I have some more experience in the classroom.