Detecting Crap and Failing To Do Anything About It

I'm in my second full week now at LCHS. Last week  taught my first two classes, periods two and nine of freshman academic English. I left school today feeling pretty down on myself.

For the entire semester I've been watching my co-op, a teacher in her twetnty-sixth year of teaching, do lecture style lessons with little differentiation save for group-work on worksheets. She is good at lecturing and leading (and when I say leading I mean, controlling and commanding) whole-class discussion. Half of the class answers her questions and seems to learn the novel (Fahrenheit 451) although they may not be sure why they are learning the things they are. The other half does enough to get through these discussions by following along enough to answer her surprise questions when she calls on someone random. They also know who to group up with when it's time to break into groups. It is all very teacher-centered teaching. I have detected this crap from day 1.

So naturally, when she decided to being letting me take over the freshmen (who she claims, "can't handle" more innovative teaching styles), she told me what I should do. Today marks the third day that I spent pretending to be her, leading slow read-throughs of sections of the novel, teacher-centered IRE questioning, and lecturing. I am not good at it. But I don't have much experience with any form of teaching, and when I teach she sits in the back and interjects when the students are missing something she thinks is important, or when students point out things she doesn't agree with. She frowns when I begin talking about something that didn't come from her prepared notes. It makes me nervous and causes me to falter when speaking.

Second period seems to like me so they are very participatory in the discussions and we often end up having good conversations, some that even pull away from the very ingrained IRE format they know. (What i mean here is I, the teacher, asks a questions, the students respond, and I evaluate their responses). They enjoyed the poem I showed them last week and had fun writing their own stanza about abuses of technology. So, even though I teach them like a young male, Mrs. C, they seem to be learning (60% of them) and they seem interested (75% of them).

Period Nine is a different story. Today very few of them responded to questions and no one wanted to share the poems they wrote or didn't write last week. Half-way through the lesson I saw students looking at the clock, and I even looked myself, hoping it was closer to 3 than it was. I am not cut out to be a lecturer, at least not at this point in my life. Mrs. C blames the students and says they are tired and eager to get out of school. She also says, "these ones just aren't as bright". But I know it is my fault. I cannot blame these kids; I need to do something differently.

I am detecting my own crap. I am following a misdirected path and doing little to change it.

I am sitting down now to plan some things for my lessons in her Sophomore American Lit class tomorrow. She  gave me her materials before I left and said, "here, do what you want with this". But "this" is what she wants me to do. I know I should do something different, but I don't know if I have the courage. I don't want to overstep my boundaries in this classroom and have her dislike what I am doing. But, I know I am full of crap when I am putting my own need to be liked by the teacher over the needs of the students.

But also, I don't know exactly what to do if I were to do things differently. Currently I have a model who is modeling the ways of teaching that I don't want to learn. One of my classmates told me, "Well, at least you are learning how not to teach," but I don't know if that's a good thing.

I have some things to figure out tonight, because I don't know if I can handle another period of awkward stares as I stand at the front of the room and stumble through prepared questions, looking for prepared answers.