Looking back at the Microteaching presentation, it went by in a flash—partly because I was nervous, partly because fifteen minutes is no time at all.  The most uncomfortable part about this whole experience for me was constantly having to look at the stopwatch I had running on my phone.  While some it—the amount of time I was having everyone write—would have been timed in a normal class, nothing else would’ve run by a strict time schedule if it were my real classroom.  I would so much prefer to judge how much time we need based on actual student needs that it felt very uncomfortable and unnatural to do it a different way.

Even more uncomfortable was not being able to discuss what I could hear happening around the edges.  I so badly wanted to be able to talk with everyone and hear everyone discuss this story for an hour, especially once I heard several different perspectives on it happening in the different groups.  I think maybe I miss my classroom just a little bit.

Those were the hard parts for me—the great parts were seeing people engage with the text and each other.  I really appreciated the feedback I got, and one of the things that had me most nervous was about the way I give instructions.  It’s odd for me how I can feel the slight difference between high school teacher Ms. Short and elementary school IA Ms. Short (where I am now), and I was worried that I might have somehow become demeaning or belittling in the way I address people in the classroom.  So, it was a bit of a relief to find that the consensus was that instructions were clear rather than annoyingly simple.   It was also great to hear that things I had hoped would work well, did work well, and that the point of the lesson translated to people in the class, even if not all of my ninth graders would be able to peek behind the curtain to see it too. 

I love teaching, I love working with students, and I’ve missed that part of my life for the past two years. With graduation on the horizon, I’m looking forward to entering that world again.  It was a great, albeit fast, fifteen minutes to be able to feel like a real teacher again!