3/28

Today was possibly the best session I've had with the Freshman so far. The session went very smoothly, I was able to make sure the students were on task, and we got a lot accomplished for their spring showcase projects even though not everyone's partner was present (and it looks like we might have one group of 3). Before this session I don't think the students were really thinking much about their showcase projects because not too many of them had an idea. So we started off with me showing the students a couple of nice examples from Dvice.com to get them geared in the right direction (because although I have told them about the site before, I don't think too many of them actually looked through it so picking a few good examples from the actual site and showing them really helped). After that, we allowed the students a couple of minutes to get an idea down and then we got into a little circle discussion and went around and had the students tell everyone the details of their project. This helped a lot becasue even those that still weren't too sure about what they were going to do had a chance to heear other ideas from their peers which ended up sparking new ideas for them. After going around for the second time and really pushing the students the think about the details of their projects, we had them write it all down on a piece of paper which we would collect later as a reference to who's doing what s that next session we can help out even more and also make sure the students are on track.
Aside from the fact that a lot got done and that the students were kept busy, I think another reason why it was a good session is because I was a bit more assertive with them when they were gettin off task (like games or facebook) and we had to take away the internet from some of them for a while but it all worked out well. So I guess as an instructor, as much as you would like to, you can't awasy get caught up in being on the students' good side and sometimes it is just really necessary that you be a little more assertive than you regularly are in order to get things done; however, I still believe that a good balance between the two will always keep things going pretty smoothly and not bring up too much tension or anything like that.
The showcase introduction to the seniors that I lead didn't go as well as with the freshmen, I think mainly just because they are seniors and are ready to graduate, so they werent really all that engaged or interested it seemed with my introduction to the showcase. But that's fine I guess because I remember how it was to be a senior and just ready to graduate. The second time the showcase was introduced (with me and sabrina to the sophomores), I think it went much better and the students seemed very engaged and interested in the showcase; however, I think I might have been talking too much for this presentation because it was realy supposed to be for Sabrina to get more used to speaking in front of the class and finding her own way to get them engaged so the last time we introduced it, I hardly said anything and let her lead--and although there were some things I felt were important to remind her to add in the presentation, I think it went pretty well with her by herself becasue the srudents still seemed pretty engaged.

*Also, note-to-self: no more using new fonts on powerpoints--it takes too long install them on other computers in order for them to show up and it doesn't always work. So...yeah.