As part of their job, teachers are expected to plan instruction. Teachers are required to craft lessons and have a lesson plan to serve as a script that dictates how their lesson will flow. In New York City, public school teachers are contractually obligated to have a lesson plan on hand if requested by an administrator. Lessons that revolve around a bigger idea or concept are typically grouped into units, which teachers are also expected to plan and outline objectives for. During my Internship class (EDU 3681), I had the unique opportunity to be placed at The Young Women’s Leadership School of Astoria (TYWLS) teaching Computer Science and Web Design to 6th, 7th and 9th graders. One of my 6th grade classes was a class designated as an ICT (Integrated Co-Teaching) class, meaning that a certain amount of students in the class have special needs or disabilities to warrant the need of an extra teacher in the class to assist with instruction. Despite this requirement, my mentor did not have an additional teacher as the class was not considered a core class required for graduation.
I had the unique opportunity to design lessons and units for this class for the duration of the Spring 2018 semester. This experience was unique for me as I had never: 1) planned lessons and units to dictate the direction of multiple classes before, 2) incorporated accommodations for students with disabilities in my lesson plans in actual practice, and 3) seen the results of the instruction I planned impact students deeply. By the end of the semester, I had successfully taught all three classes how to create basic websites using HTML and CSS. My 9th grade class was even able to host an in-class showcase of their final project for the year which was to create a website for a local business. I was able to gather valuable information on how to teach various subjects within my field, with some lessons going excellently and other lessons going really badly. This feedback gave me valuable data for future classes that I will teach. When I re-plan these lessons, I will be able to remember what worked and what didn’t work and try to improve for my future students to understand. One example of a lesson that went bad was a lesson on ‘CSS Positioning’. The kids were not understanding the concepts trying to be taught, and we were not able to come close to meeting the objectives as a result of my delivery. I thought that I had a good lesson on paper, but it was a train wreck in person.
