My First Lesson........Dance

First off, thanks to everyone that's starting to post on here. I agree with George (Paul) Peirce that it is interesting to hear all our different experiences. I'm sure that by reading each other experiences, we can learn quite a bit from each other. So thanks for posting and keep em coming!

So my first lesson I taught was dance. It was to the grade 9 class who I was telling people when I was there for our shadow day, these guys broke out and danced to Single Ladies. I knew right away that these guys would be fun. My CT for that class (one of four) is really fun as well, she gets into the games, she puts on her ipod, and had more energy and enthusiasm than I do. This makes working with her fun so when she said that she was thinking of trying out some dance with these kids, I jumped at the chance to teach them some basics of what I know. She loved the idea and said go ahead.

We had started off the day by playing some dancing warm up game which involved some booty shaking and some back to back dancing. I didn't quite get the moves at first (or the song they were singing) but i got them enough so that I could participate. Then I gave them a short intro into myself and how I thought that I was alright dancer (gave them a little sample of my limited Repertoire of moves). Then showed them a clip of Jen and her friend, Thor, dancing and finally the video that Jen and I made. Afterwards one of the students said "Mr C, you such compared to that guy". We all had a good laugh over it and it brought me to my point, even thought I wasn't that good, it was still fun to try something out. Dancing is a skill that can be learned like any other skill. When asked, they thought that it would be pretty cool to look like Jen and Thor so off we went to learn.

The lesson didn't go as smoothly as planned. We only learned about four moves: inside/outside turn, left arm slide and two handed arm slide. It wasn't pretty nor perfectly technical but they enjoyed it. With ten mins lefts, I just let my ipod play and they just danced with some of them switching partners to show different moves they came up with. I actually took the teacher and danced with her for a bit. The boys afterwards asked me to show them how to do the flip that Jean did to me in the video so I showed them and they all tried it out. Even the teacher got flipped once. It was cool. Later on after lunch I saw most of those 9's in the hallway and they said that they had a great time learning and asked if we would do more the next day. I told them to ask Miss Fast and we'll go from there.

Later on in our staff meeting, the 3 teacher candidates were introduced by our CTs. After I was introduced one of my CTs yelled out that I'm getting kids to dance and then 3 teachers then said "so you're the guy that all the kids were talking about this afternoon". It turns out that it was a bit hit and the students were talking about it. Also, Miss Fast said that the other half of the grade 9 class was asking here if they were going to learn dance too. Hearing this, she asked if I could come teach the other class on Monday during my prep period. Hopefully this will go a bit smoother. So I made a pretty good impression on my first actually class. Now I have to prep for my basketball unit and see if I can reach those who hate basketball. My advisor will be there too. Piece of cake.

Anyways, I'm out so enjoy your second week everyone. It sounds like we're going to start getting into some teaching of lessons so I can't wait to hear how your lessons go. Peace of now.