2nd Day Practicum

Today was a necessary wake-up as we worked with the youngest students. We had a few of the children from yesterday, but most went to the older 4-6 class upstairs. This was my day to observe so I wasn't teaching until the end, when there was a left over block of time. I didn't want to sent them home early and I stepped in to do a review. These are young children and they needed supervision and to be kept on task. We had several boys who were rambunctious and mischievous, which resulted in a lot of poking and prodding and more than a few attempts at "pantsing" (two successful). I thought about intervening but since we were filming and no one was in danger of dying, I considered it best to let things run so Sarah and Kerry could review their own performances. I know I am going to use all my experience as a teacher to control the action in the room, and I am going to have to maintain a confident and authoritative demeanor with them.

You can see one of our little firecrackers in the yellow shirt on the floor after tussling with his mate during set up.

Nin and Glow are here practicing the introduce yourself in English game.
I am sure most professions have some required level of awareness and call for adaptability, but I wonder how they stack up to teaching on a given day. I have been thinking much of the concept of awareness and flow in the Buddhist readings I have been doing, and I wonder if anyone has written a Zen and the Art of Teaching manual yet.  I am reminded of when I first moved from Riley to RDHS and suddenly had twenty-six, 17 and 18 year olds in front of me for 80 minutes at a stretch. Each group has its own subtle and not so subtle rules of conduct and each has its own ideal "flow". Tomorrow I teach a lesson on left and right as well as reviewing all that we have learned so far. When you begin to think of transferring even such a simple concept as this, it begins to stretch outwards towards complexity fairly quickly. Speaking of Zen Masters, here are my new $3 pants which instantly moved me further up on the enlightenment chain!