Day 74: 6/13/2018
I am more productive than yesterday! YES!
Even though I did not get up early as planned this morning, my day was a (much) better day than yesterday. I had planned things out since last night but I also left some room for changes that could occur during the course of the day.
I got up much later than my plan but I did not feel bad about it as much as I did before. I well realized that it could still be a good productive day if I try hard enough. So, I did. Moving along the day I worked things with the time at hand and the plan along side. Plus, since P’Gluay and I decided to cook our breakfast instead of going out, I regained two hours for work and that perfectly compensated what I lost earlier.
Considering my work throughout the day, I started off by continuing reading Nystrand (1997). The more I read, the deeper I looked back at my own teaching, especially when I first started teaching at a student teacher and realized my teaching was really bad or even a waste of time for my students and myself. This is not because I was a bad, sloppy, unorganized teacher but it was due to the structure of the classes I taught not knowing much about sociocultural theories back then. I remember vividly how all classes were carefully planned ahead of time. This sounds like a good effective teaching but the bad news is that all my lesson plans were prescripts leaving no room for creativity and authentic discussion. To put it more simple, everything was controlled. Considering my own teaching based upon rigid scripted plans, I lost so much teaching opportunities to engage my students in so-called real teaching. Instead, I filled the class with pseudo-learning by asking test questions which did not help my students with their learn or form their own understanding of English. My classes back then were only help my students to pass the test but never to really improve their English. Basically, reading Nystrand has helped me realize there is a lot for me to work on to truly be a good teacher who really helps learners to become proficient language users with useful, engaging, authentic interactions in class.
In attempt to work more efficiently, I had tried two strategies today. The first was skimming. Since a chapter of Nystrand (1997) was a detailed report of a study back in the 90s which is not something I looked for, it was a great opportunity for my to try using either speed reading or skimming. As I am not good at speed reading, I adopted skimming and thus tried to read through the chapter quickly to find what is relevant to my work and skip others. Thankfully, this saved me a great deal of time but still I could not get rid of the thought that I might miss something important. However, considering the time I have to finish my proposal now, it is time for me to move on to work with something more relevant, meaningful and critical. I have to constantly remind myself that I can always come back to it if needed.
Another strategy was writing. As I continued to work on my revised research proposal again in the evening, added bubble comments (a function available on Words) along with notes regarding I need to work on make the points to be worked on more invisible and encouraging. This strategy has been reasonably effective since it had helped me with planning about reading and writing. It feels so good when I finish each point and delete each bubble one by one. It was a feeling of accomplishment. :)
A quick recap of what happened today reminds me of the fact that there are always good days and bad days. I am thankful for being able to get a good amount of work done today as well as being able to spend some quality time with my husband. I would like to end the day with a good feeling and look forward to an even better day tomorrow with hope.
6/13/2018 10.30 pm.
