What worked and what didn't

Reflecting on the first weeks of school, what has worked the best for me is the monthly assignment of a classroom manager and a public relations manager. On the first day of school, I allowed the students to volunteer as managers. I told them that their learning expereince would be two fold through out the year. They are going to learn about healthcare but they are also going to learn how to function in a work environement and develop their interviewing and leadership skills. Each month I will assign new classroom and public relations manager. Every student will be asked to serve in at least one of these capacities in order to develop their skills. I decided on two managers after hearing from administrative staff that our school's students were highly migratory. Combined with the hear say of the difficulty in conducting classes and catching students up on missed classwork, I felt a need to have a public relations student help out. This student's main responsibilities are to introduce new students, guest speakers and special activities to the class and to assist students who missed classes with obtaining needed materials and updates/notes. My classroom manager assists with distribution of papers, writing information on the board, most recently, getting students on task at the beginning of class and other duties as the need arises!
The one thing that has not worked well is my proper utilization of lesson plans. I thought I could use one set of lesson plans for all of my Intro classes and keep everyone pretty much at the same pace. Fat chance, I did not take into consideraion all of the variables I would encounter from one class to the next. I have learned that smaller classes fly through material and have minimal debates or thoughful insights to vocalize compared to larger classes which will engage you in so many teaching moment converstions that you will fall behind in your lessons. With only a few moments between classes. I have found little time to jot down changes in my plans based on the students' learning for the day. By the end of the day, I have mixed up who was doing what. Recently, I made a checklist of things to cover during the week on the board. Now I try to check off the information as it is covered for a particular class or write changes on the board as the events occur. In this way, I can refer back to the notes at the end of the school day and make my final changes. There ae a number of things that were good and not so good during my first feww week, but overall, the good outway the bad and I look forward to learning more teaching strategies this semester.