Watch Me Teach

There is so much about this TPA process that is frustrating, and so little that is edifying. My mentor teacher filmed me teaching my three big lessons - the plans for which I submitted to Pearson weeks ago - this week. Yesterday, during my student teaching seminar at the university, I found out that I can actually change the lesson plans up to the point when I submit the TPA on November 6th. This means that I didn't have to drive myself crazy setting up the whole unit almost a month in advance.

The worst part about all of this up to now has been getting through the buildup to these three lessons on these three particular days, while I'm also trying to learn how to teach - getting to know the kids, figuring out the attendance and grading systems, creating the unit as a whole, etc. Now I find out that all of this was unnecessary. In all likelihood the better way to structure this (even if it wouldn't have been quite as honest) would have been to film lessons I thought were probably going to meet the criteria for getting a high score on the TPA, choose my two 5-minute clips, and then craft the lesson plans in retrospect and write the commentary.

The fact that the "right" way to do this was actually the way that interfered more with my learning to be a teacher - the sense of freedom I had as of Thursday, when the filming was over, is indescribable - points to a limitation in the design of the TPA. The fact that the only way to make it conform more to the real rhythms of teaching and learning to teach would be to fictionalize it, at least to a certain extent, point to a more serious flaw.

But what's interesting, now that I'm looking again at the rubric for choosing my two 5-minute clips out of 150 minutes of classroom video, is that the highest points go to teaching students strategies for comprehending a difficult text, not helping the students to comprehend or dig deeper into the text itself. I suppose this goes along with the New Testament dictum, "Teach a man to fish . . . "

Watching all the video, by the way, is excruciating. I look old and fat. I love getting lost in the moment when I'm in the classroom, focusing totally on the students and the content; and now I'm incredibly self-conscious about what I look like. Yet another unedifying aspect of this process.