AEE 412 Reflections

As my very first AEE 412 lab (and my first lesson!) came to a close today I had a lot to think about. I'm at the very beginning of my teaching journey and I got a little insight into what I might be like as a teacher. We (my 5 classmates and I) were instructed to give a 15 minute lesson on an assigned topic. I picked chess and although I never have played, I had to teach my cohort members about the board set-up, the pieces, and their values in the game.

Preparing for a 15 minute lesson takes a surprisingly long time, but I made worksheets, satisfaction forms, and tests for my classmates to complete. I only had two days to prepare so didn't have the actual chess game pieces and board for the lesson. I did construct the lesson in a way that my classmates were able to work in pairs and think through topics. My number one take-away from my first teaching experience is that time goes SO fast!! I ran out of time and didn't get everything I wanted into my lesson. Surprisingly though, my "students" still performed well on their quizzes that were handed out.

As I said, with time constraints I wasn't able to bring in a chess set. Although I knew ahead of time that is something I would've changed, my fellow classmates said the same thing in my feedback. My fellow classmates did say I had nice visuals of the game on the worksheet, but the actual game could've been helpful even though we didn't go over actual game play. Definitely something to plan better for with the next lesson. Thorough planning ahead of time could help me get more supplies for lessons. I did have students create their own chess board to see if they could guess the set-up based on the background information I gave them. Although I got positive feedback for that short activity, I definitely could have done it more effectively. It would've been better if I had board templates for students already or given each team a board and pieces to set up themselves. Interestingly enough, the students that had never played chess before were able to set up a board almost perfectly just based on the information I gave them. The information quickly included which pieces were the most important, least important, and how many of each there were.

All in all, I think my first teaching experience to my peers went pretty well. I already can tell how I can do better next time: better planning, more supplies/visuals, and a practice run could all be ways to improve. I already guessed what my peers would tell me to work on and they all were at least satisfied with the lesson. Not a bad start! I'm looking forward to improving more and more with my teaching as the semester goes on!