To Move or Not to Move?

One of our dyad assignments this quarter is to videotape ourselves teaching a lesson so that we can watch ourselves and analyze our performance. I have mixed feeling about this assignment at this stage of the game. On the one hand, it may help us to identify patterns in our behavior that should be improved. For example, we may observe that we are primarily looking to one part of the classroom, or turning our back to the class as we write. On the other hand, for many people, this is the first "real" lesson we will teach, and I wonder whether getting it under our belt, so to speak, isn't enough, without the added stress of videotaping and analysis. It seems to me that there is potential to become so self-conscious about some aspect of our teaching "presence" that we find it more difficult, not less, to get back in front of the class.

However, today was the day my dyad-mate and I had arranged to videotape ourselves. We each taught a slope-intercept lesson to a class of ninth graders. My friend got hers over with relatively early in the day, but mine was last period. I was only a little nervous. After all I live with cranky teenagers, and this was only an hour. We had prepared as well as we knew how to, and had arranged to use technology to facilitate the lesson.

Unfortunately, seventh period arrived and the technology quit working. My mentor teacher gave me a choice: forget the interactive software, Activboard and document camera; or move to the room across the hall. After a little hesitation, five minutes into the lesson, I decided we should move. So all thirty-odd of us picked up and went across the hall.

For better or worse, I gained another observer as the room belonged to the math department head. Actually, I think the kids were much quieter than usual with four adults in the room! I was able to mostly forget about everybody else except the students.

The lesson itself went fairly smoothly, although I did not end up with any time for the kids to begin their homework, as is the usual practice. I proceeded more slowly through the body of the lesson than I had anticipated. Pacing is really difficult, especially when you don't know the students. I regret not having gotten to group work time (starting homework) and I didn't get the definition for slope-intercept up for the kids to write in their Toolkits. However, I hope that in taking time to bring kids up to graph lines, and to work through problems step by step enabled more kids to grasp the central idea for the day. I think I would have left more behind had I just marched along. Choices, choices...

Now comes the fun part...watching myself on videotape...