Noel Teach in Reflection

My teach-in workshop went very well in my eyes. The workshop flowed well, all my partners knew their parts and they knew how the activity would run through. We also had been prepared, we had all the videos we were going to show up all in one window on safari. That way we wouldn’t have to do that during the presentation. I found being a teacher for two hours fun. I liked to be in charge. What I liked more was running an activity that the students enjoyed. When I saw them laugh and they told me they had a good time I was pleased. I like seeing that my activity had gone well with all groups. At times it was challenging because I wasn’t ready for students to be misbehaving or hard to control. Though there are times when students do something fun and they get excited and start misbehaving. I realized being disruptive has a larger effect than the one the student thinks. To a student its just calling out or making a comment at the wrong time. To a teacher it is an interruption of the flow of the lesson. When someone calls out our makes and inappropriate comment, the teacher has to tell them to stop. If they talk to their neighbor repeatedly then you have to stop even longer so you can separate the two of them. The stopping is the hardest thing to do because afterwards you have to find out what you had been saying before you were interrupted. It is also a little awkward and nerve wrecking to punish a student because you want them to have fun in your class but at a certain point it starts to ruin the lesson. Also, you don’t want the student to be mad at you and not participate in the lesson anymore. When it came down to it Harry, Josh, and I still managed to keep control over the class even if it meant separating a group of kids. If I could’ve I would’ve ran through the closure of the lesson because it is the most important part and I wanted the students to really take away the message from the workshop. I’m not saying the students didn’t get the message we had sent them, but we had thought it could’ve been even more powerful. I think they all got the message but because of the closing, some of them took it lighter than others. I also would’ve wanted to get to know who was in my workshop before hand. So I could maybe talk to their teacher to see how they learn and what’s the best way they learn so that we can combine all t hose things and have each student walk away knowing just as much as the next person. I walked away with a sense of empowerment. The fact that I could hold my head high about who I am. Also, i walked away proud of my new ability to spot stereotypes in the media, whether they be advertisements or television shows or even posters. With that ability I can challenge the companies making and telling them that their advertisements portray people in certain ways. Also, that is it unfair because people will then portray others in the way that the advertisement did. This will cause them to make unfair judgements upon others or give them a certain idea about a group of people which often isn’t true.

My set up group was outstanding. I had small group which means there was more communication between all of us. I was with Logan and Bryce. This was a great mix because I got to work with people I never get to work with. Since Logan is in the other class I never work with him. Since Bryce is in the other split I hardly can ever work with him. We all had very good ideas on what our video should be like. Everyone contributed the same amount. We can through with our main goal. This was to make a video that explained what social justice is and also a video that will be funny so that the students can laugh and learn about the topic were telling them of. Bryce was good at recording and asking questions to the people we interviewed. Logan was good with recording also and editing the video. I was good at coming up with things to say and transitions in the video. The assemblies went well. I happened to also be an “MC” in the second assembly. I had a great time running the assembly. Making announcements and calling other people up was fun. I liked to talk between events too, I liked the fact that I was mainly talking to the students it made it a lot more casual and open.

The process leading to the Teach-In had its up’s and down’s. I liked the visits because each group was in charge of making there own visits and finding an organization to work with. The only part the teachers did was monitor the blog posts and visits and talk to the head of the organization if necessary. What I didn’t like was the proposal. I thought the idea of writing the proposal came to late meaning the date we had to write the proposal by was close to the day of the Teach-In. The part about the proposal itself i didn’t like was the fact that it was sometimes hard to include what the students would walk away with. For me I think it would’ve been easier to verbally explain your ideas instead of writing the proposal because somethings are easier to say than write. Also, I think that the comments on the proposal weren’t that helpful. For example, one comment would say “this is disconnected, add connection.” Then you would be on your own to figure out who to add the connection. It would be better if they said “… is disconnected. Add something like… to connect these two ideas.” I understand the teachers’ intentions though. They didn’t want to spell it out for us because it was our workshop and they thought if they told  us what to say our voice would be lost and it would be like they were running the workshop. For next year I think you should keep everything the same because it teaches you how to teach a lesson and all the unexpected things you might have to go through. The one thing I would like to change is I would like for the teachers to remind the students that this is there workshop so they have to figure out hot to add this and that to there workshop, proposal, etc. I think that in the beginning that idea was communicated between the kids and the teachers. Then when it came down to writing the proposals a lot of people became dependent on what the teachers said. Overall I think the entire Teach-In was very successful!