Lesson Planning, Delivering, Assignment, High Blood Pressure, Insomnia.
The last week, for personal reasons, have been particularly hard. Trying to balance all of the above is starting to become a real struggle, one that I did enjoy I must add. The problem is that we have such a high work load and need to set a side time for ourselves. I cannot do the latter. I spend all week planning lessons and to add to that we have this assignment that needs to be handed in. One lesson in particular is still giving me grief but I keep telling myself that this is the hardest subject I could teach in my respective field of Sports Science and so when I go for job interviews I know it will benefit me. I taught first thing this morning, and had good feedback from my mentor for the lesson. The only problem is that I am still struggling to sleep, I wake up and squeeze breakfast down me, have a shower and go off on my travels. When it comes to the actual teaching I look a real state! My eyes are blood shot and I feel physically sick, none of this is due to nerves or anxiety but I just cannot sleep!
Reading the above, you would think that I am suffering from doom and gloom. This is not the case at all. I have just today started to teach on Level 4 (HND) Exercise and Lifestyle module, further experience that I am looking for. I watched them do presentations today and enjoyed giving them specific information that they genuinely wanted to take in. I know a lot of students progress from the HND at Bridgwater College to top up degrees. When I let them know I was always their to help them with that process they were glued. One student stayed behind at the end and asked me some specific questions regarding the Degree and eventually PGCE training process. This is one of the reasons I wanted to get into teaching and am really looking forward to teaching on this module.
I spent this afternoon in practical football lessons, something that I really enjoyed. The students like to have strong rapport with the staff here. When I first started I thought they may be pushing it but as I get to know them each one by one I can see that they are a really good bunch of students and I enjoy teaching them in this subject as well as others. They can be demanding sometimes but that is where I come in.
Specific teaching feedback this week has focused on subject pedagogy, and in particular ensuring that the students have a variety of activities to complete. In one particular science based lesson I am anxious of getting the content over so much that I keep ignoring a range of inclusion activities. This is something I am going to address next week after a healthy and positive meeting with my mentor for this subject. One of the reasons for this is that the staff here have handed the students a workbook that must be completed during lesson. I have felt restricted by this and sometimes become lazy as labelling it as an activity in the lesson plans. No more shall this be the case. I am going to utilise all of my creative flair to engage the students, first thing on a Thursday morning and in all of my other lessons.
Watch this space.
Finally, I am looking forward to the Christmas break so much. Not because I don’t enjoy what I'm doing at the moment, far from it, but I just need a rest. Some quality sleep. A meal that has not been cooked by a microwave or a kettle. A resting heart rate below 100 beats a minute.
Lloyd.