But in my efforts to take it slow, I caught myself talking to them too much the other day from the front of the room. Yippity-yap, yippity-yap, I just kept talking and talking and talking....it was like I couldn't stop myself, as if the amount of words that came out of my mouth would cause the learning-meter to rise one bar at a time.
I wasn't lecturing in any sense of the word (haven't done that in years); I was reviewing an example of an experiment with them. They had all created their own experiments the night before, with minimal advance instruction on how to do so. I told them they would find it a little challenging, but they needed to get it completed even if they weren't sure what to do. I wanted to see if they could apply all of the vocabulary on which I had been obliquely instructing the week before. I wanted to see if they really understood the concepts behind the words by being able to design an experiment and identify those concepts in their own labs.
But, for some reason, I got all teacher-panicky the next day. I was worried about the rough time they had been having (many students messaged me via email or through Edmodo the night before), and then my yippity-yapping began. And while I was all up into my yippity-yap, they were sitting in silence with their pre-labs open on their netbook screens, sitting comfortably watching the teacher show, watching me do my job.
This lasted about 10 minutes. Then my teacher spidey-sense started tingling, warning me that I was doing all the work in the room at that moment. And I realized that I needed to fix the situation pronto.
So I stopped talking, told them to get in their teams to review their pre-labs, fixing them so they were ready to go on Monday.
As I let my students work in their teams, I wandered about the room, asking questions, showing students how to find the answers, and listening to discussions taking place about how to measure the height of their pendulum while it is swinging or search for the equation for speed and argue about the ways speed is different from velocity or debate what type of surface will slow down the Hall's car or what angles they should use for the height of the ramps.
I finally felt like a teacher then, walking around the room. I began to get excited along with my students, interacting with them, getting to know them better, and just having fun being with my students.
It reminded me why I love teaching.
Funny how I don't really feel like a teacher anymore when I'm up front and center near the board. I think it's because I can't tell if students are learning when I'm the one doing all the talking. I also think it's because I can't get to know them if they are passively watching me working in the front of the room.
When I finally shut-up, real teaching and learning began. I can't keep wasting my students' time by filling that time with words that aren't helping them do any learning.