One of my worst but favorite memories of my teaching career thus far is a time that I often look back on and laugh about now. I was working with 9th through 12th graders and attempting to teach "citizenship". I thought it was important for my students to understand their rights and responsibilities for being citizens in our great country, and the extremely special community we live in. So as I'm being observed by my principal, I'm tfailing at attempting to engage my students in our "discussion" over our "rights" and "responsibilities". We had done sorts, created webs, watched videos, I'm not even sure what else. At some point (after a good 10 minutes straight of only blank stares) it became quite obvious this lesson was an awful decision, especially while being observed by my principal in my second year of teaching! So to wrap it up, I said one last time "Okay friends, who can tell me one of our rights as a citizen?" And next thing I know, my student starts screaming, arms flying and all, "But what about the wrongs Miss Richardson?! But what about the wrongs?!". At this point, my only option was to laugh; luckily, I noticed my principal was as well.
Lesson #1: stick to lessons you know have the best opportunity of being successful when being observed. Luckily, I had a principal that could find the humor in the chaos with me while we talked about what I could (and should) have done differently!
Lesson #2: When you know your students are literal, black and white thinking students, make something abstract like citizenship literal! The biggest lesson I took away from that was my lesson was poorly planned and did not take into account my students' needs. It was much too abstract for them and simply wasn't meaningul for them. In other words: fail.
Lesson #3: laugh. If I took all of my mess ups, embarassing moments and failures to heart, I'd already be done with the profession I love so much. So instead, I choose to laugh.
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