Sink or Swim

This was not how I planned it. I thought I wouldn't be teaching on my own until next week and that my first lesson would be on the background to Dr J and Mr H. I have put a lot of thought into this lesson as have many of the people who have helped me by posting comments. Instead, today due to a set of unforeseen circumstance I found myself with the second 50 mins of a double period intermediate 1 & 2 continuing a lesson on Brooklyn Cop. Preparation time consisted of the supply teacher (retired English teacher from the department and henceforth known as my Guardian Angel) saying as we went back into the class after break
"you do the content section with them".
Before I could say
"what exactly do we mean by content in the context of Int 1&2"
(thank goodness because this would have been a really stupid question)
or,
"I'm really not ready. I need time to prepare"
there I was, TEACHING.
Oh boy was I rubbish.
For what must have been 10 minutes but felt like hours I floundered around the subject of content in the poem trying to do what the Guardian Angel had been doing. She had been working from a mindmap of things we need to think about when "doing" a poem for an examiner. She had covered the structure of the poem and then verse structure. She led from the front with exposition which she followed by a concise summary of the learning point she had made, written on the board as she talked. The class then copied this down under the relevant heading.
I couldn't DO it.
Mind blank in panic I found myself unable to follow her logic re content. It took me until the students were watching me with the dead eyes of sharks to get my thoughts on the content of this poem together and begin to have an idea of how I could go about getting them to separate the narrative of the poem from the meaning of the poem.
Our first C&P tutorial on teaching poetry finally crept hesitantly into my head and I realized I was just not going to be able to do it the way this experienced teacher had. My hands were shaking too much to write legibly on the board by this time and anyway I had no idea where the chalk was.
I set off in my own way breaking them into the groups they had been working in yesterday and assigning each group a verse. They then fedback to the class using an OHP (we had OHP copies they were working on yesterday). Through this process with class discussion on each of the points and little bits of me doing direct teaching we got to an understanding of "content" we even discussed the poem as a Work of Art bringing more clarity and at the same time more emotion to the issues of Policing and Violence than a newspaper article or TV report ever could. They stopped doodling and staring at each other meaningfully. EVERYBODY said something and it was all useful. I began to ask questions to make sure they were understanding.
I was swimming the Butterfly, I loved them all, I loved Brooklyn Cop,the Guardian Angel and myself (are all English teachers shamefully egotistical?) Then I ran out of work.
I felt myself flailing before grabbing the driftwood of the "structure of the text" questions which had been left by the class teacher in the event of the supply being a mathematician. I couldn't understand why they didn't jump to the task full of enthusiasm. Nobody spoke up,they fidgeted, they looked at each other. It was uncomfortable. I had no watch, there was no clock, my sense of time had gone completely. I asked what the time was. Five minutes until the bell!
I apologised, I said that of course they couldn't answer 20 questions on the structure of the text in five minutes, I had had a numpty moment.They were to clear up and be ready to go and I needed a volunteer to be Teacher For Two Minutes when they were. I had 3 volunteers.
I chose one and explained quietly that he would stand in front of the class and give a summary of the learning points from the lesson, explaining the difference between narrative and meaning and giving an example of both. He had got it and he explained it well with others chipping in with their own examples. He enjoyed telling them to raise their hands and not shout out. I watched, I led the applause for the teacher for two minutes, I dismissed the class. I struggled to the shore. The Guardian Angel was waiting for me, I'd forgotten about her. She said that I was going to have to do it sometime, that I will not have hours to prepare lessons when I'm teaching for real and that she knew I could do it and I had. And I had. It wasn't a great lesson, maybe tomorrow I'll find out that I've confused them totally or that they simply can't remember a thing about the lesson. I'll learn, I'll do it better next time.

Key Learning points for Willie Loman

There will be a next time. When it was going well it was as enjoyable as finding the perfect pair of shoes with 75% off.
Work with what works for you, don't try to teach like somebody else.
You can turn it round when you feel like running away.
They forgive you if you admit to making a mistake. They can laugh with you not at you.
Know where everything is and have a watch at all times.
Don't underestimate what a learner is capable of. Don't be afraid to push them when you believe they can do it.
Do re-live the experience however uncomfortable so that you can learn from it.
Check the next day to get a real measure of what they learned.
Carry toilet paper in your handbag.