Something that has been a bit more overwhelming than I anticipated is the communication part of teaching this class. Communicating with the teachers on dates/times, missing students and getting kits to them, planning on attaching strings once jellyfish were dry and installing the jellyfish in the school.
I was up till 4:30am the night before and woke feeling planned but also pretty exhausted and nervous. I had class in the morning and realized I hadn’t printed my lesson plan yet so on my way to the school I stopped by MCAD to print the lesson plan but the printer ended up not working and I went without the lesson plan. I got there a little later than I had planned which made me feel rushed and stressed. I was able to get my computer connected and ready to go (this was something I was especially nervous about because I didn’t have a great backup plan if it didn’t connect).
It took much longer than expected to get materials out and I had wished that I had been able to do so before the class started. One thing I was nervous about was the students not being able to choose their own colors since I had pre-packaged all the tentacle materials, however, I was able to keep the tissue paper squares (for the heads of the jellyfish) separate and had the teacher go around and let the students choose a color.
The transition was tricky from the first class to the next.
I also noticed that when it came to asking the students questions about the project (reflection part of class) I felt extremely shy and skipped it in both classes.
I would say in the first class maybe 25% of the students finished their project and in the second class maybe 75% of the students finished their project. I spent an hour and a half after the classes ended attaching tentacles to the ones that hadn't been attached yet.