Today I had a great discussion with my CT about responding to student responses, which stemmed out of an actual incident in class. I posed a question to the class, and Student A raised his hand to answer. His answer was not what I was looking for, and I told him so. Student B raised her hand, said practically the same thing that Student A did, and yet I didn't shut down her response as an incorrect one.
Honestly I didn't ever realize that I had, in a nutshell, invalidated Student A's response by letting Student B answer when they were saying basically the same thing as Student A. My CT brought it to my attention, and then we talked about ways to avoid doing that. It's something she still finds herself doing, and she's been teaching for 15 years. That's one thing I don't understand about my classmates who are student teaching too, and their CT's leave the room when they take over. Who would be there to notice things like that if my CT wasn't in the room? How would I know that this was something I was doing if my CT hadn't pointed it out?
My problem with it was not that she was giving me a critique, but rather that I had failed my students somehow and/or had not met some ridiculous expectation that I had set for myself. I tend to hold myself to pretty high standards and when I fail to meet those standards, my usual reaction is to cry. I know, I know. Like I said, it's not that I was freaking out at my CT for calling me on that, but rather that I was disappointed in myself and was upset at failing. So we had that conversation about how that's a skill that takes teachers years to learn.
So I wouldn't say that it was a failure, by any means. Heck, Student A may not have even noticed that I had done that. But I know now, and will strive to not do that anymore.
Tomorrow I get to test out my lesson that I want to use for my observation from my PTI at UNM. I'll probably be back Thursday with a report of how the observation went.
Tata!
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