COMING TO A CLOSE...

To think the semester is coming to a close and we are done teaching UAY seems unreal. The semester has flown by and so did teaching. I feel like it was just yesterday I was feeling anxious for our students to join our class and for my first high school teaching experience to begin. Our class turned out to be a hugh success and I couldn't have asked for a better mix of students, to both challenge and inspire me. I believe the topic in which Katie and I chose to teach was a great fit as well; I know we both learned a lot about teaching different book methods and taught each other along the way.

If I were to change one thing about our lesson plan it would be to minimize activities. A lot of the activities we planned like different book binding activities didn't end up fitting in our schedule. They took up more like the whole class period than half as we had hoped. We learned that each student works at their own pace and a lot of the time when you are learning new techniques they are hard to teach and can get frustrating. So don't cram to much in a lesson have one main goal and some sponge activities incase one student finishes before the rest. All of our students managed to finish their altered books which was a main goal for the class but I would have liked for the students to have experienced some of the mini projects we had planned that we never got to.

I am so glad we were able to have this experience, this preface to the high school setting was great and allowed for a more personal relationship with the students. We experienced some situations within our class that we got to work through carefully, more so than if we had been in a high school classroom setting. I also enjoyed working with a partner, we really worked well together providing feedback and backup when necessary : )! I wish all of the future teachers of UAY luck and hope that they can such a wonderful experience as I have.