Final Reflection

I just had my last meeting with my class yesterday and concluded my Junior Achievement experience.

I enjoyed doing the sixth lesson plan with my students than the previous two. The fourth and fifth lesson plans were the most tedious and complicated lessons in the Economics for Success (8th Grade) packet. However, this last lesson plan was a relief for me and my students. The instructions were easy: just hand out Risk Scenario cards to each group and have the students role play the scene. It was fun to watch the students work together and show their creativity to the rest of the class. In one of the scenes, one of the characters gets in a car wreck. So to play this scene out, one of the students got on a chair and "crashed" by falling out of the chair and on to the floor. It was really funny to watch. Although, the students and I were bummed out that we couldn't have all of the groups role play, because time ran out. I should have managed time better earlier in the class while I was going over the purpose of insurance with the kids. The students had so many questions about insurance (probably because many of them will be 16 in the next two to three years and will be driving cars soon).

Looking back on this Junior Achievement experience, I really enjoyed doing it because I learned a lot about myself and how to reach kids in the classroom. I initially took Economics 349: Economics for Teachers at the suggestion of my adviser Dr. Putko. She told me it was a brand new class and that it would fulfill the upper division Economics section of the Social Science - Single Subject Teaching course requirements. I walked into Professor Imazeki's classroom without knowing what to expect. As soon as I read the syllabus and saw the JA requirements that said I had to volunteer teaching a class at a school far away, I thought about dropping the class and taking something else. I eventually want to go on to become a teacher, but at the time I didn't feel like I was ready to start teaching a class on my own. Plus, my sister and I shared a car so it would be difficult arranging our schedules. After thinking about dropping Professor Imazeki's class, my conscience chimed in. If I want to go on to teach in the Social Sciences, that means I might have to teach Economics. So I thought to myself, "What the heck? Just give it a try." I was worried about driving to a school far away because of my class schedule and having to share the car with my sister. Thankfully, my JA mentor helped me find a school that wasn't too distant with a really helpful teacher and a wonder group of bright kids. Overall, the experience was very rewarding because I learned more about myself and teaching kids.

One thing I learned about myself is that I'm am too nice most of the time. My physical presence is strong because I am much bigger and stronger than all of the students. But as soon as I start talking and answering students questions, the kids start to realize that I am a non-confrontational type of person and they continue to chit-chat at their desks while I am still talking. My teacher that I worked with suggested ways that I could work on my decorum while teaching in the classroom. It's always good to be nice and courteous to people, especially your students. But it's also OK to be assertive too, because the students have to be courteous to the teacher too. I think I will be a much better teacher once I am able to improve on my assertiveness, while at the same time being a nice person too.

Last Two JA Sessions

As this semester comes to a close, that also means that my JA sessions are almost up. I think Professor Imazeki said we only had to complete five or six JA sessions. So if I were to do only five, this Wednesday would mark my last one. However, I think I'll go ahead and complete all six instead. The teacher I am working with originally planned on me coming in six times, so that means she would have adjusted her classroom's schedule all the way up through the 17th. Also, I think the kids really enjoy having me come in to see them. I'm sure that they want to complete all six activities written in their workbooks too--or not. Either way, the kids seem to like me, so I will try to uphold my fulfillment to complete all six JA sessions.

Fourth JA Session and Third Lesson Plans

Today marked my fourth JA session down. The kids got the entire week off last week for Thanksgiving, so it's been two weeks since I last saw them. It was an unusual day because there happened to be a field trip that half of the class attended. So I only had eleven students in my classroom for this lesson. I have to admit that I was relieved that I had so few students to work with for today because the fourth JA activity, which involved the gross and net income figures, was really confusing for the kids to grasp. Since there were only a handful of students for today's class, I was able to go around the classroom and help each one individually. Although, I didn't feel that today's lesson plan was as effective as I should have made it, because many students were still confused about what they were supposed to do after I explained the instructions to each of them individually. I think next week involves a shopping spree exercise, so hopefully I will be able to explain it better so that all of my students can grasp the concept firmly.

Today also marked the third and final lesson plans and presentations. I am very relieved that all of the lesson plans are over with. Coming up with original ideas for lesson plans has been like pulling teeth for me throughout this semester. I never want to be accused of plagiarism, so I always try to come up with the most original ideas I can think of for assignments. Right now, it's that time of the semester where my brain is completely fried and original ideas don't come quite as easily to me. I thought the content in my lesson plan was fine, especially the video, I'm glad most of you folks enjoyed it. However, I should have spent more time rehearsing because I felt like I was reading off my paper and I went over my time limit. Sorry about going on for too long folks, my bad. Aside from that, I thought everyone else did an excellent job on their lesson plans, particularly the groups-of-threes. You all deserve an A for your third lesson plans and presentations.

Third JA Session

I'm a little late posting about my third JA session from this past Wednesday, November 19th. This past week turned out to be very busy.

At first, I thought I was going to have to cancel my third week of JA because my sister got in a car accident this past Monday. The two of us used to share the car, which meant she got it 90 percent of the time and I got it 10 percent of the time. Anyways, nobody was seriously hurt and my sister was not at fault. However, the car is history. Almost all of my friends live in different counties or states. The few friends that I have down here in San Diego are either full-time students or work full-time, so they would have been too busy to drive me all the way to Poway and pick me up. Luckily, our insurance company covers the cost of a rental car for the time being, so I went and rented a PT Cruiser.

My third JA session went well. This time, their teacher was there, so the kids were on their best behavior (unlike last week with the substitute). We played the same game as last time, but this time I tried explaining the point of the game before I handed out the materials. That way, they would all pay attention to me without fidgeting over the materials. All of the students understood the point of the game much better this time around and they had fun with it.

My next session with the class won't be until the first week of December. Mesa Verde Middle School gets the entire week off for Thanksgiving, instead of the usual Thursday and Friday for the rest of the country. Lucky kids...

Observation Paper

This weekend, I worked on my classroom observations that I completed last semester (Spring 2008). At the time, I observed two classes at Hoover High School. One class was a World History class, which was made up of mostly sophomores. The other class was a hybrid for seniors; for the first half of the semester is was US Government, the second half of the semester was Economics.

As I was looking through my notes from my observations, I thought about Professor Imazeki's Economics for Teachers class and my student teaching sessions with Junior Achievement this semester. I thought about all the hard work and research it took to put together a good lesson plan in Economics, especially for today's high school students. As I was reading my notes, I wrote down that many of the students in the US Government and Economics class had no clue what economics was. When the teacher went over the term scarcity and what it meant, almost all the students couldn't even pronounce the word correctly. That's how much they knew about economics.

When I become a teacher and I begin the first lesson plan for economics for my students, I'm going to have to do a good job of making it easy to understand for my students, because many of them might not even know how to pronounce "economics" correctly.

Second JA Session

Well, today I had my second JA session with my class.

Today's lesson didn't go exactly as planned, but in the end everything worked out well and the students and I had fun. Originally, I wanted to spend about 10 minutes with the students reviewing last week's lesson, begin the discussion on decision-making and consequences of choices, then play the board game for about 30 minutes. I ended up spending too much time with the discussion because the students were coming up with so many good examples of decision-making and consequences of choices in their lives. So we ended up only having about 15 minutes to play the game.

The students were really confused over the game. They didn't understand the point of it and it was difficult to explain it to them. Once I started passing out the game supplies, the students began to get really excited and noisy. Every time I tried explaining the rules of the game, half of the class would continue talking. Also, their teacher was out on jury duty, so the substitute teacher was the only one there to back me up. So I guess the students felt they were a little more free to be noisy during class. I did my best to get the students to quiet down and play the game without having to yell at them. I went around to each table and explained the rules to each group to make sure everyone was on the same page. Towards the end of the period, all the students were playing the game correctly and were on task. However, the period ended a little too soon for a winner to be decided.

The only part I didn't like about this lesson plan were the game cards. They wouldn't tear so easily along the lines, so my students got a bunch of torn up cards. There were so many cards to tear too.

Being A Teacher Is Like Being A Bodybuilder

This past Wednesday I finally got my first JA teaching session done. It was my first time teaching students, ever. I'm glad I finally got to test the waters and see what it's like to be in the teacher's shoes, because it's a lot more difficult than I had originally thought. It's not like standing in front of your peers in your class and giving a presentation on a subject you researched. It's much different than anything else I've tried. Although, it was a very rewarding experience for me, because I learned a little more about myself and what I need to improve.

In one of my original statements or blogs, I listed a few reasons why I chose to pursue a career in teaching. One of those reasons was because I had a few teachers who were very bad at their job. Some were like robots on auto-pilot; they only cared about getting through the subject matter or curriculum as fast as possible. They didn't care about students. Some of those teachers didn't know how to make sense of the material to their students, nor did they care. A few of my teachers didn't like students in general; they should have chosen different professions. That's why I wanted to become a teacher, so that my students wouldn't have to go through the same batch of bad teachers that I went through. I wanted to be an example of a good teacher, the exact opposite of a bad teacher.

The first thing I noticed about myself when I began speaking to the students was that I didn't feel quite like myself. When I am with my friends, I feel like myself. When I am at home, I feel like myself. When I am in class, I usually feel like myself. While I was commanding attention and speaking in front of a bunch of strangers who were my students, I felt very awkward. It's probably because it was my first time doing something which I have never done before. With more practice and time, I should be able to overcome it. The closest feeling I can compare this to is the first time I competed in a bodybuilding show. I was almost naked, with fake spray-tan all over my body, oiled up, and wearing nothing but a teal-colored Speed-O. I had to go on stage with a bunch of other competitors who were just like me and flex for a handful of judges and a big audience in an auditorium. Not only did I have to do that, but for the individual posing round, I had to pose to my own music during my posing routine

Being a teacher is like being a bodybuilder: You have to make sense of something that people don't understand or care about. In a typical bodybuilding show, there are four rounds. The first round involves comparison and call-outs in the "relaxed" posture. This simply means that the judges compare all of the competitors to each other while they are just standing on stage with their feet together and arms to their sides. The second round involves the same thing, but with the mandatory poses. The judges will call-out several mandatory poses for the competitors to perform (Front and Back Double Biceps, Front and Back Lat Spread, Side Chest, Side Triceps, Abs and Thighs, and Most Muscular). The third round involves each competitor posing on stage one at a time to their own routine and music. The fourth is called the posedown; it involves all of the competitors posing on stage at the same time.

It's the third round of a bodybuilding show that makes me think of my teaching experience on Wednesday. The individual posing round is a chance for each bodybuilder to go on stage and show the audience their creative and artistic side. They choose a piece of music to pose to, and the audience is supposed to enjoy it and become inspired. For my first show, I picked Andre Rieu - Bolero De Ravel, and I had 90 seconds to pose to it. To get an idea of what I was doing, download and listen to the song, and while listening to it try to picture a bodybuilder flexing and performing aesthetic poses which synchronize to the music. The song I chose was a slow, beautiful, yet powerful classical music piece, so my poses and transitions were slow. To the people in the audience who had never been to a bodybuilding show, they probably didn't fully understand what I was doing on stage. But to the few people in the audience who knew what I was trying to do on stage, they were the ones who were able to fully appreciate what I was doing. Now try to picture yourself being in the shoes (or Speed-O) of that bodybuilder on stage who is doing this for his first time. It must be very confusing at first and awkward to that bodybuilder to do this in front of an audience and make sense of it.

Teaching a bunch of strangers in front of a classroom felt kind of like posing as a bodybuilder to a wide audience on stage, to me. I didn't feel like myself at first; I felt very awkward and unsure of myself up there. Also, I wasn't sure if I was making sense to my students (audience). Some of them could probably understand what I was trying to do and appreciate it. Others probably had no idea what I was doing or talking about, and were confused. In order for me to become the best teacher I can be, I will have to make sense of the material to my students so that they can fully understand it, much like how a professional bodybuilder with a powerful and monstrous physique can pose slowly to classical music and make it look beautiful.