Say No to Nerves

Dr. Foster's Decree

When Dr. Foster assigned #psuaged22 our first challenge to teach during our very first class of Fall Semester at Penn State my first thought was, I know this is what I signed up for as an Agricultural and Extension Education major, but you want me to teach, like... right now? The nerves set in as I began to read over "The Castle Task" where I would be teaching my Wednesday lab group facts about medieval castles and how to correctly identify the parts of said castles in fifteen minutes. 

In true damsel in distress fashion, I began my first teaching experience as a Senior by showing up early to set up my lesson in the wrong building and thus utterly destroying my confidence, and about fifteen minutes worth of castle drawings, by showing up late the the correct lab space. With no knight in shining armor to come to my rescue, I was a mess of nerves during this exercise. While I did my best to remember what I wanted to accomplish during this lesson, I was admittedly too nervous to even look at my lesson plan long enough to remember to write my objectives up on the board. I started my lesson by asking my "students" what connected the three terms protection, 1100 AD, and home. After a brief overview of the time period and use of castles, I handed out drawings I made of different castle parts to each student and asked them to introduce the parts so we could talk about them and draw them in order to begin memorizing. We wrapped up the Middle Ages by labeling each of the castle parts during a group assessment.

Relate, Learn, Apply

All jokes aside, this first Reflective Teaching Lesson taught me a lot about who I am and who I want to be as an educator moving forward. As teachers, it is our job to learn a topic and convey it to our students in an easy to understand, engaging way. From a learning perspective, fifteen minutes is not a lot of time to become an expert in medieval architecture, so it was my goal to be clear and repetitive during this lesson which are two things that I really appreciate as a learner. Besides the true location of my Wednesday lab, from this lesson I have learned that I am a much less effective educator when I am unprepared and nervous. While I can prepare until I feel confident, I also have to be adaptable to changes in my classroom that just happen. Perhaps most importantly, I learned that if your students do not know why what they are learning is important, they will be less inclined to actually learn. 

In the future, I aspire to be a confident, knowledgeable, engaging educator. Though I did not feel like this was accomplished during "The Castle Task", I can take what I have learned from this experience to learn how to master my nerves. I do not want to be a teacher that rushes through material to avoid long spaces of silence just because they make me uncomfortable. While I am transforming into a teacher, I am also still a learner. Making mistakes this semester will help me to be a better agriscience teacher in the future. My goal for our next teaching challenge is to say no to nerves, be flexible, and to let my students know the why behind my lessons.

"Taylor"ed with love,