Second Year Teaching Placement: Day Eleven

Have you ever felt so awestruck after learning something that you just cannot even? That is me right now. Today was such a great great teaching day for me! It's one for the books for sure! So I started with coming to school and helping the substitute teacher in grade 10 and he let me teach the reading part. So I had the students get their textbooks and I asked a few questions then read the text out loud to the class. Then I had them read in their groups and take turns reading out loud. After that, in second period I went to help Heather do whatever work she didn't want to do and for today that was research videos for pathos, ethos, and logos. She wanted to use them as examples to teach these rhetorical devices of persuasion but I figured that I could help her look for some. Then I asked her if I could teach them because it's kind of redundant to learn about it then teach it to her then have her teach it to the class. I mean it might as well come from the source right? So I found several commercials to prove what ethos, pathos, and logos are.

Then it was lunch, and since I worked in the English office into lunch time, I had to eat by myself in the Moderns office since everyone went for a walk. But I did not mind not one bit. It was nice to have that little calm moment to myself before engaging with all the students. Then it was time for us to have the lesson, and I wrote the definitions of what each were on the chalkboard and explained it. I started off with ethos and gave a brief explanation about it having to do with credibility then used a Sensodyne commercial to prove that we are persuaded to buy this product because we believe in the opinions of professionals. Then I explained pathos which is my favourite, which appeals to the emotions. It evokes a certain emotion in response to whatever was seen. So I showed the Extra gum commercial and the "Daddy is a liar" life insurance video. These videos use soft music and nostalgia to make us empathize the actors and actresses' situation. Finally, I talked about logos as logic and used Inconvenient Truths' documentary clip about rising CO2 levels to demonstrate the use of statistics and graphs to persuade an audience.

After that I joined a new English teacher and observed her class. Holy cow she was such a good teacher. A good teacher in the sense where she was so smart and knowledgeable about English that she taught it so effectively. It's not like she was incredibly nice or super sympathetic to students (which I'm sure she is) but I was more so blown away by her intelligence and well-rounded knowledge about learning and teaching English. She uses a Pinterest page that she has her students look at for ideas about relevant issues in today's society and she is constantly reading. She told me to take electives in things like Drama, History, and Film because there are these kinds of components in English and taking them in university will make it easier in teaching since you don't need to self-learn. Today was such a great learning and teaching day.

Until next time!

Suzy