I started my second week of teaching math, and I felt much more confident this week than last. The main reason, I think, is that I didn’t let myself rely completely on the curriculum script.
Our district has a new math curriculum, but my point is not which curriculum it is or whether it’s of the discovery or traditional school. What I realized, after my experience last week of glancing at the lesson quickly and parachuting in, is that following the script left me feeling scattered and out of touch. That sounds contradictory, since a script should help, rather than hinder. But I felt like I had no context, and using the script felt forced and fake.
So this week, when I knew which lessons I would teach, I went through and dashed off my own one-page “script.” I considered how I might approach the lesson and how to add to (or take away from) what was already there. That is, of course, lesson planning, but until last week, I had put a lot of faith in the script, as if it were fail-safe for someone who wasn’t used to teaching math. Instead, I felt totally ineffective.
Today, I felt great, and I even didn’t have to read my own script—because I wrote it and knew it. Maybe it was the content—factors! But my modified lesson worked well, the students were engaged, and I felt like I knew my material. Now I’m all ready for tomorrow: prime and composite numbers.
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