On July 30th I taught my 8th practicum hour, and it was the first hour outside of the conversation cafe. I taught a one hour lesson on Canadian Music in the Canadian studies portion of the L&C. It went well overall, with a few small hiccups. The good news is, this is a learning opportunity.
I didn’t take into account the different types of statuses needed within the Big Blue Button program when I went to start my program. I joined the morning class before the time of the class I would be teaching, this way I would be able to seamlessly transition from one PowerPoint to another. In theory, this was a great idea but in reality, I didn’t have the moderator status, so I was unable to make breakout rooms, or control the PowerPoint for the first 20 minutes of class. I had to text the program coordinator and ask if there was any way we could fix it. Since it took 20 minutes to figure that part out, I was behind on my timing. This led to me not having time to finish my second activity. I was happy with how my first activity went, I focused on the Mother Earth song from the Blackfoot people. The students made excellent connections with the song and Chinese ceremonial music. I didn’t however get a chance to do my music across Canada activity which showcased famous singers/songs from each province.
Going forward I’m going to focus more on the timing of activities. Timing is definitely something I want to be mindful of, but I am confident that overall I have good time management. I already thought of ways I could have saved time if I got the opportunity to deliver this lesson again. For example, once I was able to go into the breakout rooms I saw that students were doing their job and putting in a good effort, so I could have just read out the answers instead of trying to get them to figure out the activity all over again.