Student Interaction

This week was my first week of leading a math lesson. My teacher has the students do a set of math facts that must equal whatever the date is. For example, today was the 16th, so their answers had to be 16. Pretty simple, right? All was going well. Students were shouting out "1+15!" "10+6!" Then a little boy threw out "100-15." I'm not really sure where he got this from, but clearly this was incorrect. The thing about first grade, is you can't explain this to them the same way you would explain it to one of your peers. I started to stammer at first. Here were 16 sets of eyes, staring up at me, just waiting to soak up whatever I had to say. I decided to use the number chart. I talked them through it, while explaining that if we counted 15 spots backwards from 100, we would get 85, not 16. I then explained which number we COULD subtract from 100 to get 16. I remember being so nervous when all this was happening! But once I had "conquered" this incident, I got a huge rush of confidence in my abilities to become an educator.

I think if I could change anything about my experience, it would be to have kept my cool, and not gotten nervous. This is easier said than done, because getting up in front of an audience is an intimidating thing, even if they are only six years old! I did not feel bad about getting so nervous, because my teacher told me that I handled it really well, and she could tell that I would be a great teacher some day.

That was an amazing feeling =)