As Time Continues to Fly

               This week, there was no prompt, so I decided to reflect on the transition process, and differentiating between classes.  These are two ideas that are coming up in my placement recently, and I thought I would take the opportunity to share.

                Over the past few weeks, my host teacher and I have been slowly transitioning responsibility from him to me.  This gradual picking up of responsibility has allowed me to be a presence from day one, and allowed me to grow more comfortable with my place in front of the classroom, and with the classes I will be taking over during this process.  By the time of the “final hand-off,” I will have a good grasp of what needs to be done, and how I need to present myself to each group (at least, I hope I will).

                This brings me to my next point:  differentiating lessons, not between students, but between classes.  One of the things that I could see from the beginning of my placement was that my host teacher seemed to make changes to lessons on the fly, interpreting things that I didn’t notice, and “mixing things up.”  It seemed like a useful skill, and something I desperately wanted.  Unfortunately, I seemed to be blind to the sixth (or is it seventh) sense that seemed to be in play here.

                But, through the “gradual release of responsibility,” I think I am finally understanding the differentiation necessary.  As my host teacher has said (or rather, what he says in the approximated words my mind remembers), “you can’t teach every class the same things in the same ways.”  In other words, you need to know the class in question on a “personal” level, not just a curricular level, if you want to be effective.

                As we go forward, I am trying to get a sense of where everybody is, and how to “mix things up.”  It’s slow work.  I am trying to edit rapidly and, not on the fly, but after rapid-fire self-analysis after classes (and segments of classes), so that each class can benefit from the previous one.  I am waiting to see how this works in the long run, and I hope to someday be able to “edit” on the fly myself.

                All in all, the gradual release of the classroom responsibility and the emphasis on seeing each class as an individual entity is the thing that is foremost in my mind right now.  As the semester moves forward, these are some of the things that I will continue to work with to better my teaching skills.  There are some new things we (mostly I) am going to try in my future lessons and lesson planning, and I look forward to trying them.  Classes are like students, they need individualized instruction.  And the sooner I get away from “one size fits all instructional strategies” (really more like “designed without a specific classroom community in mind strategies”), the better.  I’ve already started the process, and now I need to see it through.