How New Teachers Can Be More Spontaneous in the Classroom
I have admitted it. I was very afraid of being visited during my first year of teaching. I clearly remember when the English inspector came to visit me. It was in 1997. I had prepared and laminated tons of brightly colored visual aids alongside posters that I had ordered. One side of the class was reserved for student work. I wanted everything to be perfect. I rehearsed my lesson plan twenty times. My fifth graders were ready for the visit having been informed by their homeroom teacher. The twenty-four students were seated in a “U”, with books and notebooks on their desks.
I ran to the teacher’s room, which was a stone’s throw from my classroom. I saw the inspector’s car pull up and slowly his green wheeled suitcase came into view. I ran back to the classroom and back to the teacher’s room because I had forgotten some last minute things for the lesson. When I returned to the classroom, the inspector had arrived. She said, “Why are you so out of breath?” She felt that I was anxious and saw right through me. I wanted the lesson to work exactly as it was written. I was a new teacher. I had no experience in listening to my teacher’s voice and intuition. But he wasn’t getting a grade on that.
The lesson went well. She liked the diversity of the lesson and my approaches to classroom management. He complimented me on the attractive bulletin boards and student work. In the end I got a good report. And I learned a couple of important things along the way.
If you’re looking to be more spontaneous, well that’s fine. But keep the following in mind:
Much of a new teacher’s classroom success depends on how willing a teacher is to go beyond what is written in their lesson plan and read to students. This takes many years of practice and perseverance. But it is important to enter the training to learn to listen to the teacher’s intuition. Having an activity bank is not always enough. The same goes for sticking to the book. It is important to experiment and try new things. Communicate with students. They will give you the answers.
Spontaneity is setting aside lesson plans and doing something without a second thought. While this takes considerable classroom experience and maybe some guts to some degree, a (new) teacher has to start somewhere.