Compared with the other TIP students I'm relatively young and inexperienced with my teaching, but even I didn't expect to be so nervous going into my first actual high school lesson. After all the planning and lesson-designing it was time to get things moving and to get to know the students.
But what I learned immediately, and have since also seen with my 488 experience, is that students are actually very receptive of student teachers. I made sure to explain to them that I was also there to learn, and that this was going to be a growing experience for all involved. I explained my goals and they seemed enthusiastic enough, especially once they learned that they would be watching youtube videos and eventually making their own movies.
For today's lesson I used two youtube videos to give a lecture on the impact of social media on public opinion. The details for this lesson are including in my lesson plans, but the gist is 1) media influences public opinion by influencing what we talk about and 2) social media is special because it's created and moderated by information consumers, not journalists.
I tried to be lively and funny and relatable and the students seemed to take my personality in stride. When it came time to discuss how social media influences them, they offered lots of personal examples, which inspired me to assign my first homework EVER in my teaching career. One student said "No, please! We were just starting to like you!", which definitely made me laugh, but I wanted to see if they could spot media influence in their own homes. I asked them to go on facebook and write down one example of one person or group expressing their opinion about something, to be brought in for the second day of classes...
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