Troubles Will Come-Week 2

   After the success of my first week, I was looking forward to my second week student teaching.  My students enjoyed the History Alive lessons (as did I), and seemed to learn quite a bit from them.  I thought that this week would be the natural conclusion of the lesson plans, with a single day dedicated to the study of Napoleon.  I though everything was under control...and then on Friday, I hit a snag.
   I had planned a lesson for the day based on current events.  I had planned to talk to my students about the inauguration of President Trump and to address any questions or concerns they might have.  I had also planned to tie the events of the election into the steps of the French Revolution.  My cooperating teacher modeled this method during 1st period and I believed I could successfully model what I had seen.  I had forgotten that each class is unique and what is effective in one class may not be successful in another.
  My 7th period class I expected to be very involved and questioning, like they usually are.  Instead, they were bored and disinterested.  Despite prompting and asking questions, they just had no interest in talking about the inauguration.  I could see that class time would be wasted if I continued with questioning, so I had to to pivot and change my approach. 
   I broke the students up into groups and had them open the text book to the life of Napoleon Bonaparte.  It took several minutes for everyone to get organized and to learn how exactly they were going to read the text, but after 5 minutes everyone was on task.  The students broke up into groups where they each took a section of the text, read it, then taught the other members of their groups.  This 'Round Robin' proved an effective means of engaging the students while also ensuring that the class time was spent in a productive way.
   Although I had kept a backup plan in place, I didn't realize that to properly implement a backup in the classroom a teacher had to be prepared to implement it at a moment's notice.  Additionally, I found that adjusting to circumstances required a good deal of thinking on your feet.  Although students may change the plan for the day, they should never get the impression that the teacher is unprepared or uncertain about what to do next.  This requires that all backups activities be prepared and ready to go at a moment's notice.
   I would have to say this week proved invaluable for teaching me that lesson plans don't always go as planned, and that the good teacher needs to be ready to think on their feet and improvise as necessary to ensure that students are not deprived of  an opportunity to learn.