When I first started at my Gymnasium, Carsta, my Betreuungslehrerin, told me I only had to teach for 15 minutes or so, at first, but that I would eventually be teaching the whole 45-minutes. I concealed my terror. Forty-five whole minutes?? How will I ever be able to stand up there and teach for 45 minutes? It is so long? was basically my inner-reaction.
My biochem professor, Amy, once told my class that time passes differently depending on which side of the teacher’s desk you stand. On the classroom side, time passes agonizingly slowly. On the chalkboard side, time flies. She was right. This week, I have been at risk of going over the 45-minute class period, multiple times! And, today, with Carsta’s 12th grade, I used the entire double period: 45 of my minutes plus all of Carsta’s 45 minutes. Wait, I did what? I taught, by myself, for an entire 1 1/2 hours. That’s right. I could not imagine doing this, before I did it.
Of course, it helps that the topic was US Elections. I explained the electoral college, and introduced them to the idea that America actually has more than just two political parties. Imagine! Then I went over the reasons why third parties are so small and powerless in the USA. Then I asked them to come with pros and cons of a two-party system vs. a system with more parties. All of this took 45 minutes. For the second half, I gave them a 7-page handout which is basically a survey of the presidential candidates’ positions on almost 100 different issues; their positions are reported as “pro”, “con”, “not clear”, or “unknown”. Included candidates were Obama, Romney, Johnson, Stein, and Goode. (If you don’t know which parties the last three belong to, shame on you.) They had maybe 10 minutes or so to read through the handout by themselves, during which I explained what abstinence-only education, subsidies, felons, and tenure all meant. The saddest was to explain what “racial profiling by law enforcement” meant. (Why, Arizona, why?) Then they had the chance to form small groups and discuss what they thought about the candidates and their positions. Finally, we held a mock-election. Interestingly, at the start of the hour, I asked them who would vote for Obama, and who would vote for “someone else” (not necessarily Romney). Everyone said they would vote for Obama. At the end of the lesson, the final tally was 10-Obama, 4-Stein, 2-Johnson.
And those 90 minutes passed by sooo quickly!