Last week, the Teachers as Writers Challenge asked to write about the worst lesson you’ve ever taught.
My thoughts.
The worst lesson I ever taught. Hmmm…
I’m sure there were many bad lessons but it is hard to justify any single one of them as being the worst.
While I can’t say what lesson it was exactly, I am sure that it happened in the morning.
As a 5th Grade Team Teacher, I had the opportunity to teach two sections of math and science each day. I would hope to get all of my mistakes out in the morning, and I know that the afternoon class would always get the better of the lessons.
I often felt bad that the AM students always got the worse lesson each day, but it did give me a daily audition to improve my teaching. I learned a lot from making mistakes during the morning, then reflecting during lunch, and coming back to improve instruction in the afternoon.
This worked. That didn’t. I won’t do that again. I’ll try that a little bit differently this afternoon.
If I did experience a complete disaster the first time around, at least I knew that it wouldn’t be as bad during the second try.
Was it the worst? Maybe. But at least I had a chance to improve each day.
Rich