Myself on Camera

As many others have noted, I must admit that watching myself on camera was slightly painful. The day I decided to film myself happened to be my 3rd lesson of the summer and my first time having a formal evaluation. There also happened to be about 6 random people  from another teaching program in my room as well (hence the large non-high schooler who takes up a good amount of space on my video). The first thing I noticed about my video is that I do a LOT of talking. More than I really need to. It seemed like I would try to fill up the silence of my underwhelmed class by talking and talking and talking. My tendency to talk to much, makes for an informational, but slightly boring lesson for the kids, so I know that I need to learn how to shut up and let them learn on their own. The only problem is that in order for them to learn on their own the still need to have the correct information. This means that I either have to let them answer questions from the textbook on their own, or provide them with more outside reading which will allow them to learn the material. The two problems with that are that I a) hate the textbook and b) am rarely able to find outside reading at an appropriate reading level. So I either need to suck it up and use the book or becomes very creative with my sources.

Another thing that I noticed is that I say, "Right?" after pretty much every sentence. I didn't know I was saying it that often until someone pointed it out to me, and after watching myself on video I realize how true it is. In my mind, i justify my excessive use of the word as a reaffirmatin for the kids that they're actually learning: You know this stuff, right? That makes sense, right? This isn't hard, right? So I guess I use it as encouragement for both the kids and myself to make sure that everyone is on the same page. I've heard from other teachers that everyone has something, a phrase, a word or what not that they just can't let go of, and I guess this is mine. That being said, I've also witnessed how repetitive use of the same word can become slightly distracting during a lesson, so my goal is to try to cut down on mine.

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