I taught my first lesson at the high school last week. Half way through the class, as everyone was working, I realized this was my first experience ever teaching at the high school level. "Not to bad," I thought to myself.
Of course there were a lot of things that went wrong, but also a lot of things that went surprisingly smoothly. First period is always the most difficult, because the students have just spent 10 minutes hanging out on line to get through the metal detector and another 15 minutes talking and giggling through the morning announcements. When the bell to begin art class finally rings, no one is ready to be serious. Which is why, this class is the perfect class to experiment with new and fun ideas.
No one was thrilled by my lesson on contour line drawing. They did it because they knew they had to and because they have grown to like me a little bit. Most of them didn't want to see me fail. (This does not included the student who slept through the class, the student who continuously ate candy that she pulled from a giant bag on her lap, or the student who was drawing anime in his sketch book.) However, had the lesson been a little bit more creative, more conceptual, or at least more active, I could have gotten everyone to participate.
I did the boring contour line lesson, because it is what my assisting teacher asked me to do. I wouldn't do it again. What I did learn, is that I need to think more actively about transforming dull lessons. Next time I hope to propose a lesson that my teacher and I can both be satisfied with as well as the students.
