A Quick Reflection

Writing regularly in this blog is proving to be more difficult than I imagined. Obviously, student teaching is taking up a lot of my time. I have a few minutes before I have to get ready for the day, so I’ll jot down some thoughts I’ve had recently.

Overall, my experience is going very positively. I’ve been teaching for the better part of two weeks. On Tuesday I am wrapping up the unit on economics with a test. After that, I will be conducting a mini-unit on personal finance. Teaching economics has been quite the challenge. It seems to have a very negative reputation among social studies teachers and although I don’t agree, I can see why. When you’re used to history and government it can be strange to spend an entire lesson drawing graphs and doing math. Luckily, I’m fascinated by economics so I haven’t minded spending the time teaching it.

The high point of the unit was probably an activity I did to demonstrate the benefits of free trade. I gave students bags of candy that corresponded to a certain group. Each student came up with a “satisfaction level” for their bag and we tallied up the class total. Then, I let the students trade within their group. They reassessed their bag and came up with a new satisfaction level. After tallying up the class total again, I combined two groups and let them trade again. After re-tallying the satisfaction levels I then allowed the entire class to trade with each other. I think the increase in class satisfaction levels after each round very clearly showed how everybody benefits from a free-trade environment. Plus, the students were very involved and excited by the activity and it just so happened that my University Mentor was in the classroom for one of his official observations.

The low-points so far have to be the relatively spotty homework completion rate and some difficult/completely non-comprehending lectures I’ve conducted. I know I’m being way too lenient with giving kids full credit for homework that has been turned in late, but at this point I don’t have the system or desire to figure out who was absent and therefore legitimate in turning in late homework and who is just turning it in late. It is something I’m planning on improving with the next unit. As far as the non-comprehending lectures go, I had a real hard time explaining and demonstrating comparative advantage. It’s a difficult concept and I’m pretty sure there is very little understanding in my classroom of what it is. I guess we’ll find out today during the review game and tomorrow during the test.

I’m enjoying my time in the classroom and feel like I am learning a lot everyday. I just have to keep focusing on where I can improve and putting forth the effort to actually do so.