Declan and I ready to teach with our class at the Rockbridge County High School.

Last Thursday, when my partner Declan and I arrived at Mrs. Payne’s classroom, she told us, “They are all yours,” and she was not joking.

As soon as the bell rang to signal the start of class, the room full of eleventh-grade English students looked to me for the lesson plan for the day. I was initially nervous because I questioned my ability to teach a group of students the lesson plan I had developed. I thought, what if I sounded weird or the worksheet I made did not make sense? However, as the class progressed and the students and I began to learn more about one another, the classroom became a lovely environment of questions, observations, jokes, and support. I learned much more from the students than they could have ever gotten from the lesson plan I developed.

While being the teacher, or mentor, for the class, I took on the role of a guide. I guided the class discussions by asking insightful questions and making intelligent comments on the students’ observations of their worksheets. I kept students on track both time-wise and content-wise; I tried my best to redirect side conversations by posing questions about the interview projects most of the students had conducted on a community member in a profession they desired to one day join. I guided the students to state, synthesize, share, and reflect the information they gained from their worksheets and group discussion.

Two EL principles I have picked up and integrated into the lesson plan that Declan and I taught are collaboration and competition and service and compassion. Collaboration and competition entails both group and individual development. Service and compassion entails students strengthening themselves so that an environment of friendship, trust, and group action is clear. The worksheet Declan and I developed  the class in a manner that went like so…

The teacher teaches, then the teacher and the students work together, followed by the student groups working together, and finished with the groups coming back together to share what the groups brainstormed as a class

The method we chose to deliver our lesson and the worksheet we developed, demonstrates the EL principle of collaboration and competition.