Good Teachers Think On Their Toes

Ten days. I have to wait ten whole days before I can get back into the classroom and really begin what I have set out to do. The first day was totally observational. I took a back seat (literally) and watched. Period one, reading class. Period two, test and power outage. Period four, reading class. Period five, test. While it was disappointing that I was not able to observe much "teaching time", I feel like I learned a lot about classroom management skills and how to deal with spontaneous situations that you as the teacher have no control over.

Mrs. Bachini took the extended class time due to the power outage and used it as a teaching opportunity for the freshmen. When the lights went out and the students had to stay in Period two for an extra fifteen minutes, I was worried that the classroom would turn to chaos due to the curiosity and unplanned nature of the power outage. However, I was pleasantly surprised that this mishap was used as a teaching experience.

The students sat in their desks intently listening to every single word Mrs. Bachini had to say as if she were telling them how to win a million dollars. Topic of conversation: the lockdown drill. Mrs. Bachini began with going over the general procedure but then (after getting the reassurance from the dean that it was due to a fallen telephone pole) she told her students that if there were an emergency and no way of communicating with each other, they may be in danger. When I say that you could hear a pin drop in the room, I'm not joking. Each and every student sat in their desk with their eyes fixated at the front of the room. After Mrs. Bachini was done with her "this is serious business" speech, the power came back on and the students carried on with their day.

I could not believe how quickly Mrs. Bachini thought to use the time. If she had not had something to say to the students who knows what the classroom would have looked like. I'm excited to see more of her teaching strategies and add to my teacher toolbox.