I'm really tired, but the peer examination of my teaching went well today!
I got compliments for being super-calm and confident, having great classroom presence, speaking clearly and articulately, and creating an extremely positive atmosphere in the classroom! They said that they enjoyed being there because every time I reinforced a student, *they* felt really good. Those theater, psychology, and rhetoric courses I strained over have paid off.
On the other hand one of the problems with today's lesson was that the previous lesson (a recurring weekly segment on origami) was a bit too much of a success, and the kids wanted to keep folding long after I'd told them many times [when once is usually enough] to put their stuff under their desks. One of the girls suggested a model she wanted to fold for next week, too :3
My kids, by and large, seem really happy. A lot of students who came in "low-skilled" are thriving, exhibiting great interest in learning even outside of class (checking out books from the library on math, looking up stuff on Google at home, etc.), and grinning like crazy whenever they get a question right. I make them do stuff that is legitimately *really really hard* and then build on it, and they start lessons saying "OH NO, NOT AGAIN" and then I *can't get them to stop* when we need to switch to another activity.
Seriously, the very lowest-skilled students, even the one who started off cringing and unhappy because this was their third time repeating geometry and the third time with this particular teacher doing this preparatory summer program, are becoming cheerful and confident, able to help other students at points--confiding, even, to my co-teacher, that this is the first time in their many years with the program they've enjoyed writing in their journals and can't wait for that part of the day to arrive.
And some of them have started asking me things like what's done in a doctorate of mathematics. Or what my (effective) minor in rhetoric is all about.
Behold.