In class on Wednesday I suffered (and I mean that quite literally) a breakdown of the technology that I am supposed to be teaching about. I couldn’t get the Google Docs presentation that I had carefully prepared and that worked just fine at home, to work right. The presentation mode wouldn’t present and the links only opened blank pages. From my point of view it was a total disaster. In the old days when I went out to do a workshop or presentation I carried my computer and a raft of adapters to fit every conceivable projection device AND I printed transparencies of my talk so that if all else failed I could use an overhead projector which every school and office had at that time. It’s been several years since I’ve printed transparencies and cables have been standardized to the point where I can be assured that all I need is a VGA adaptor for my Mac.
Yesterday brought back near disasters of the past… not only
did the presentation and demonstrations not work but, I felt that I didn’t have
an adequate backup plan… nothing analogous to those transparencies I used to
carry. I talked and suggested things to
do with the computers everyone had in front of them but it was not the same as
the screencasts I had prepared and the YouTube videos I’d planned to show. I was embarrassed, to say the least.
Right or wrong I owned up to the situation and said I was
embarrassed. It would have been better
of course if I had a ‘plan B’ ready to implement but I didn’t. As I reflect on the situation I am still
struggling to decide what I could have or should have done. Even with 40 plus years of teaching and
presenting experience behind me I was flustered and fumbling. Should I always have a ‘plan B’? Should I have dismissed class with a lame
excuse that an “emergency had arisen”?
Was fumbling through with only verbal instructions and not enough
content to fill the time available the right or only thing to do? I still don’t know… I’ve got to process some
more.
What this means to you as a prospective teacher is: there
will always be days or classes that don’t go as they should and you can’t be
prepared with a ‘plan B’ for all situations.
However, you can be mentally and psychologically prepared for your own
goofs and the glitches that are bound to occur.
If you kind of expect that someday the projector bulb will burn out or
that the test copies you were sure were in your bag disappear without a trace
you will not totally panic. Further,
you may be prepared to do some self-evaluation to decide what, if anything, you
can do to avoid encountering the same situation again. Also, and most importantly, be prepared to
cut yourself a break and put the situation behind you… we all fail from time to
time it’s called “Being Human”.
I think this post falls under the heading, “Experience
Speaks”. File it whereever it fits in
your schema of teaching advice.
