Lab D: Water Polo

Lab D, the culmination of all my knowledge that I have acquired throughout the two semesters I have had here at SUNY Cortland. I had prepared for this lab for almost a month and it was going to be great. Nothing could go wrong I had double, even triple checked every detail of this lesson and it was for less than a better word "Perfect." Well I came to find out that in the real world "Perfect" does not really happen.

The night before I went through every detail of my lesson. I wrote down everything I needed so I would not forget and set all my visual aids and props out the night before. With the amount of planning I had done I thought nothing could go wrong. I got up the morning of my lesson and was quite enthusiastic. I had total confidence in myself. I walked down to the pool where my lesson was going to be and as soon as I walked in I knew something was wrong. There was electrical wires hanging from the ceiling, the pump was off, tubes running into the pool, and maintenance men were walking all around. A scheduling error had occurred and my lesson got double booked on the maintenance day for the pool! I ran up to see my professor to explain what had happened and he told me that it was going to be fine for me to "come up" with a lesson. I was in shock I had planned for almost a month for this lesson and for it to be done in a pool environment, not the gymnasium.   After the initial panic I gathered myself and with the help of my T.A. Anthony and my professor reassuring me it was going to be fine I developed a lesson in about ten minutes that came out to be one of my best teaching experiences.

During the lesson I tried to hit on every aspect of teaching I knew. In the skill groups I made I gave feedback and intra-task variation to every participant. I allowed for teaching by invitation by having the participants choose which activity they wanted to start at. This grouping of people caused my content development to be a little off because it called for the addressing of the class as a whole, but I addressed individuals and small groups multiple times to where addressing the whole class was unnecessary. When it came to the  modification of a Water Polo game on scooters toward the end of my lesson it was a little hard to give congruent feedback with the skills. This caused me to not really say much a long the lines of feedback. When my professor told me to put the participants on their stomachs instead of sitting on the scooters I was able to give more congruent feedback and become more involved that way.

Overall this was one of my best labs. Having to essentially throw away a months worth of planning and come up with a new lesson I feel was the true test of the knowledge I have acquired here at SUNY Cortland. I believe that the lessons success directly reflects on the great teachers I have had here, and my determination to be the best I can be.