Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Pacing One's Progress in Instruction

Winter break just ended. I decided that instead of doing 1 lesson a day as I have been for the past.... 3 semesters, I will begin doing 2 lessons a day. This is my final term. Assuming that I complete my term successfully (I feel silly for treating that as an assumption... Whatever), I will receive my credential by April of 2012. I will be in class everyday of the week for this last term. For my final 2 weeks, I must teach full time. That is, in my mentor's class, I must teach every lesson. It's a temporary take over. It seems like kind of a strange to jump from 1 lesson a day to every lesson for every day. So, I'm trying to pace myself for this last term. I have about 16 weeks for this term. This is how I will pace myself for this term.

I will teach two lessons each day for the first 7 weeks, three lessons each day for the second set of 7 weeks, and I will teach every lesson for every day for the last 2 weeks. That is much closer to a progression than 1 lesson a day to every lesson for every day. On that note, I'm having a belated regret about how I have structured my progression.

Despite only teaching 1 lesson per day for 3 semester, I have still gone beyond the call of duty. That is, instead of volunteering as an instructional aid for 15 hours a week for 1 year, I had volunteered as an instructional aid for 32 hours a week for 1 year (but, 15 hours a week for the third semester). Nonetheless, I could have initiated this progression structure much earlier. Had I thought of it, this is how I would've structured my progression.

I would've taught 1 lesson per day for my first semester, 2 lessons per day for my second semester, 3 lessons per day for my third semester, and 4 lessons per day for my fourth semester. Why? Well, the time devoted to each stage would've been more evenly distributed. Instead of devoting majority of my days to 1 lesson per day as I did, the frequency of days spent teaching 1, 2, 3, and 4 lessons per day would have been roughly equivalent (i.e. since the number of days in each semester is roughly equivalent).

Oh well... on the chance that this lesson will be literally or analogically applicable to me (or anyone else reading) in the future, live and learn.

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