Learn to Improvise and Try New Things

This module presented a few obstacles for me and I think these past two weeks have been all about overcoming obstacles. Firstly, I had difficultly deciding how I was going to film this project. In England students and teachers have two weeks of Spring Break because schools are set in a more year round fashion. Schools typically run from September to the end of July with six weeks of holiday time spread throughout the year. For these two weeks during the fashion module I seem to be without students or a classroom. I was stuck as to how I was going to film a What Not to Teach episode without students. I thought about using friends as actors, but where would be film the episode. Then I remembered something that my Professor had mentioned, get creative and play all the parts yourself. I also thought about playing all the parts myself, even the student roles, but it did not seem realistic. Then I noticed one of the examples given to us. It was an animated short film about what not to teach in a foreign language class. I thought about tackling this idea of animation so I began a search for user friendly and affordable sights that would allow me to explore this option. Thus my second obstacle appeared. I looked through various sights, but found one that reigned above the rest. Go Animate is an exceptional sight which was free to sign up and super easy to use. This site was fairly simple and had great video tutorials to watch for help. Although I seemed to pick up some animation skills, I still found myself learning new things every time I went to create or edit. The entire process was also much more time consuming then I would have ever imagined. Every facial expression, background, movement, and prop needed to be thought about and planned precisely for the animation to be successful. I now have a new found appreciation for animation because I know that for every 5 minutes I watch, there was probably up to 20 hours of work! I think that my big lesson this week was improvisation. I learned to work around the obstacles that were put in front of me to achieve what needed to be done. In teaching, you often have to improvise or shoot from the hip. There are a number of obstacles that might throw off my plans for the day, and although I try to stay on schedule for the sake of the students and to achieve the targets for the day, sometimes I have to adjust my plans. Because teaching is so unpredictable we have to be able to think on our feet and improvise to make things work as best as they can. This reminds me of the time I had planned a lesson that involved food. The teacher in the classroom next to me got ill and there were no substitutes so the class was split up among the other year 3 classes. I was given 10 extra students with no time to prepare. Because I had planned a lesson with a set number of supplies, I had to think fast and create enough for everyone. I was teaching about the Christian ritual of communion. Ironically I had to turn bread and grape juice (representing the wine…no real wine was served in any of my lessonsJ ) into enough to feed two classes and felt a little like Jesus himself feeding the masses with bread and fish. Honestly the whole day was hectic, but it worked out because I learned to improvise. Being able to balance and improvise are skills either natural or learned that teachers need on a daily basis.

In addition to improvisation, I also realized this week that there are many numerous ways of doing any one particular thing. Just like there are numerous fashion styles or even many different types of white T-shirts, there are plenty of ways of doing the same project or teaching the same topic. As I was learning the animation this week I thought about the hundreds even thousands of ways each module could be done. Just like everyone has their own fashion sense, they have their own creative sense that translates to work or even their career. In my case I was reminded that different teachers have different teaching styles, but there is not necessarily a right way. As long as either technique has the same outcome of reaching students.

Also I was reminded of how trying new things can be beneficial, educational, and fun. Just like we try on new clothes, we also need to try new things and not be afraid of change. Change is how we progress and learn. This week I dared to try something I would have never done before; animating and I realized how much fun it could be. You could almost say that I was addicted. I thought of how much my students would enjoy a lesson with themselves as a cartoon. I could even take it as far as teaching them how to use a simple animation sight to create their own stories. Trying new techniques or ways of teaching is how teachers are to grow and stay current. I was reminded of how nervous and scary it can be trying something new, but what wonderful things can happen when you try.