A Frustrating Day of Observation

I have finally come back to my web log, and I have a lot of catching up to do! Today I observed at the junior high once again, and there was another substitute teacher. Of all of the teachers I’ve ever observed and had, she was by far the worst I’ve ever seen. I know that I don’t know enough about teaching to critique her from that perspective, but I can from the perspective of a student because I have had many teachers throughout my education. I was surprised at first because the students in the study hall class were usually quiet, but that changed when the next class came in. To try and settle them down, she allowed them to be loud and talk for two minutes and then they had to quiet down. I actually thought that her idea was very good and would work, but I was wrong. The students were just louder after those two minutes. The lesson plan for the day was to read the chapter about the history and government of Africa and discuss it, but it was done differently than it is usually done. Instead of having the students read the chapter silently or aloud to each other, the teacher read the entire chapter to the class. At the end of each section, she would summarize what she read. It actually reminded me of a lecture class because the students weren’t involved in discussion. Half-way through the chapter, she asked the class to read the rest silently and create an idea map, but because the students had no idea what that meant, she changed her plans and asked them to write down five important words. The problem that I found from this assignment is that many of the students in the class work at different rates, so some finished and didn’t have any other assignment to work on, while other students didn’t have time to finish the assignment, which the teacher collected. I now understand the importance of having multiple activities for students to work on, which is what their actual teacher does. After they finished the assignment, the substitute went on to read the rest of the chapter aloud that the students had just finished reading, telling the students what she thought were important words rather than asking them. After they were done reading the chapter, the class watched a video about the origin of mankind. I guess I was just really frustrated about how class went today. I felt as though the students’ intelligence was insulted by the way that she taught the class and few students learned something. On a positive note, at least I was able to observe how not to teach a class. I am really looking forward to their teacher coming back!