Lab C

I had a ton of fun teaching the Cuban Salsa for Lab C and I hope the rest of you feel the same way.  Even though my lesson didn't get to the full dance, I saw lots of improvement from the first step to the last.  The teaching approach was completely different this time because it was based on dancing and the specific steps.  Everyone got warmed up by gathering in a circle and showing off their favorite dance move.  Hopefully, this also gave some students some confidence due to dancing solo in front of a whole class.  We then started from simply clapping the tempo (quick, quick, slow ; uno, dos , tres) to putting the full rock step, side step and cross step all together to perform a short dance routine.  During the lesson I noticed some of the students were really engaged by the dancing but others seemed to care less which will be comparable to a real life physical education classroom one day.  A thought I had after the lesson was to switch the two rows so everyone would have a chance to be the leaders or examples.  I also found it difficult to give the perfect angle for my demonstartions because in order to have identical stpes to the students, I had to turn my back to them.  This allows for horseplay or distractions while my back is turned.  I also had a difficult time giving feedback because most of the steps were done as a whole group while following my step by step instructions.  If i had more time, I could have walked around to give feedback and advice.  these are areas in which I will work on to perfect for our upcoming Lab D. 

Overall, I felt this was a good International Lesson because dancing is a life-long activity in which people can easily learn and have a whole new outlook on occasions such as weddings and formal dances.  Working with a partner on this lab also spiced things up a little bit.  The beneficial part was being able to bounce ideas off one another and Ben did a great job following up my lesson.  The difficult tasks were combining the lessons and incorporating all of the aspects on the C-9 form.  We were also one of the last groups to perform so we were able to take in feedback from other groups and use it to our advantage.  Even though I missed a few parts that I practiced over and over, I still managed to have a lot of fun teaching it and I felt the class did as well.  Like I always say, my mission is for the students to learn while having fun at the same time.

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Lab B2

After teaching "the Pull" for Lab B2, I noticed a few things I need to work on but I was more focused on the areas where I could see noticable improvement from my last teaching lab.  Not only was I told by Professor Yang that my voice was stronger, I could also notice during the lesson that my confidence while teacher most defenitley had a strong impact on my voice clarity in general.  During this lesson, I also wanted to concentrate more on giving all types of feedback to the students in which I did but not to the extent which i would have liked.  Practice does really make perfect because the more different groups I practiced in front of, the more confident I was going up there in front of the class.  There was one point during the lesson when I turned my back to half of the class while giving instructions which is a big concern especially working outside with lots of other noise distractions.  During my explanation of the drill, I used two students as examples which help me point of step by step each cue for the pull.  This allowed other students to see it in action as well as allowing for a better understanding of the cues such as becoming outlet passes and the different catching techniques used.  I was pleased with my overall performance even though there was a few errors which will be corrected for next lab.  I walked out of class with a positive attitude, thanks to the positive feedback I recieved from Professor Yang as well as all of the T.A's.  I hope everyone had fun during the lesson because that is one of my main concerns while teaching; whether or not the students have fun while learning will determine my own personal success.. Below you can check out my time managment by looking at my Time Coding Form as well as my Feedback and Verbal Transcripts.


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