What I would change about my teaching this past week

     If I could turn back the hands of time in a teaching moment this week I would probably take a different approach to how I re-enforced one of my lessons this week. I felt as if I had a pretty solid lesson plan with good activities and handouts. My second year students are currently completing their standard on career planning and portfolio development. It includes learning how to fill out a job application correctly. I spent about 15-20 minutes lecturing step by step how to fill out an application correctly including giving time for questions and answers. Students took notes as the information was presented. I then gave a group activity and had students look over a job application that was filled out that already had multiple mistakes. Students had to identify as many errors as possible, highlight the errors, and discuss with group members what made the errors incorrect according to the notes from lecture. After they completed the assignment. I put a copy of the completed application up on the document camera and had each group notify me of the errors they had identified. I highlighted the answers given from each group on the screen for the entire class to see as each group gave their answers. I also gave positive feedback on why the answers were correct when given. Everything was going great until I gave them a blank practice application to fill out...
     As thorough as I though I was during the lecture I soon found out that what I thought was common knowledge was not so common. Questions like what does "title" or "wage" mean. Vocabulary words I learned in school that I assumed the students already knew. Even though we had discussed salary and terms like supervisor some of the students did not make the distinction that these terms were synonymous. The biggest surprise was when my suspicions were confirmed  that over the overwhelming majority of the class does not know how to write cursive, therefore, potentially making the signature line on the application virtually impossible to complete! One day last week my son had informed me that he and his classmates had not learned cursive writing yet and he is a gifted student in 5th grade in CCPS. Of course I decided to take matters into my own hands to ensure that he learns. It was then that  I realized that most of my students' work is turned in in print. I kept the conversation about this subject light and positive with my students to avoid causing the students to more insecure about it. I just told them focus on learning to write their names in cursive for the time being and taught them the importance of a signature and what it signifies when a person signs their name on a document.  Most of them said that they believed they could manage signing their names.
     As for what I could have done differently, I have decided that I should have gone over the blank application line by line with the students on the document camera before asking them to fill one out themselves. Despite all the other work done to teach this concept they probably needed me to model a blank application not just show them one done incorrectly. As for the cursive writing thing...that is something I have decided to discuss with the higher-ups. It concerns me a great deal that either it was removed from the curriculum or teachers just are not teaching it. As for me,  the focus remains on my goal of being committed to teaching my students to the best of my ability and affording them opportunities for success every chance that I can!