Blog 6: Learning From Mistakes

I finished class early one morning, in large part because I had under-planned, and I let my students work on material from another class. That might not have been a big deal, but they were having trouble with their work so I helped them complete their assignment. I knew Algebra I pretty well and I wanted to help the class out. (Our school’s ninth grade academy is team-taught and most of the students have the same teachers.) The problem was that they didn’t tell me that it was a take-home quiz, and they weren’t supposed to have any help. Needless to say, working out some of the problems with them on the board was probably not a good idea. After class, my cooperating teacher let me know that under no circumstances was I to do that again. A teacher has to teach bell to bell, and it has to be in their content area. Although my intentions were in the right place, my actions were out of line and I could have gotten in big trouble. Luckily, the math teacher in our team was very understanding and did not take it out on me. However, some teachers in the school would have promptly chewed me out for helping their students with a quiz. My cooperating teacher chalked this one up to a rookie mistake and I haven’t had trouble with it since. Were I to go back in time and do it again, I would have done one of two things. I could have allowed the students to work on their quizzes by themselves, since they had completed all of their Geography assignments with about 5-10 minutes left in class. However, the better solution would have been to come up with something for my students to do. I could have printed up new reading guides (guided notes), had them work on vocabulary, or even created a free write or exit slip for the end of class. Teachers have to monitor and adjust for what happens in class, and part of the class finishing early is no exception.