JA Adventure- Take One

After several weeks of waiting and miscommunication between the JA representatives and myself I finally was able to start the program on Monday Nov. 3. To be honest I underestimated the amount of work that goes into teaching a lesson. I am lucky to be team teaching with Victor whom I work very well with. We met a couple times prior to Monday to go over the lesson plan and our roles and work that we were responsible for. Working with Victor made me realize that I tend to over think and I tend to make life (things) harder then they are. I was excited that I was going to be in the classroom setting, and I was curious to know how the students were going to be, react, and behave with us. To be honest even though I have worked with middle schoolers for the past two years and feel comfortable around the students I work with, I was very nervous on Monday I was afraid of not being a good presenter. I'm a tutor therefore I am the teacher assistant in the classroom and that is my comfort zone. In the JA project, I am the teacher (center stage), and I have to teach the lesson, keep students engaged, lead the discussions, games, assign work and my biggest challenge is classroom management.

We headed to the middle school early in the morning before school began to meet with the teacher, whom happened to be Victor's formor teacher. We talked to the teacher about him letting us post the JA banner, and the maps that correlated with the JA "America Works" curriculum. Then the moment of truth began as the bell rang. As the students came in, they were curious about us and what we were going to do with them. We then introduced ourselves, our purpose there and introduced the JA program and objectives.

First we passed out the table tents for them to write their names so we could , and the workbooks that we be using for the next five weeks. Then we immediately took our roles since there is no time to waste since there was much to cover in the first lesson. I was the first one up, I was in charge of giving the lecture. My part consisted of introducing the topic of how businesses and entrepreneurship affected the economic development of the United States during the 19th century. I explained several key factors that were going to be covered throughout the activity. Among them were Immigration, Emigration, Entrepreneurship, push and pull factors. I gave a brief explanation/ introduction to the following terms. Victor walked around the classroom as i was teaching, he made sure student were on task and paying attention. As I was teaching I made sure to keep a good rapport with the students by using their names on the table tents in different scenarios. My presentation involved many critical thinking questions and questions in which students could relate to or connect with. After we reviewed content from the workbooks, it was Victors turn to teach. He explained the concepts and purpose of the game we played. He divided students into groups, and each group was responsible for a group of immigrants. He did a good job keeping the students engaged throughout the game and I monitored the class. We finished the lesson right before the bell rang, but unfortunately we didnt have time left over to review the lesson. We informed the students that we were going to go back Friday Nov 7th .

Final thoughts- I realy enjoyed working with the students. They are a bright group of kids who seemed enthusiastic of having college students in their classroom. I didn't miss the chance of encourging them to go to college. I think the challenge of doing this program will be finishing the remaining five lessons before the semester is over and balancing work and all my other school work at the same time... but i look forward to this experience