Practice Teach Two

The second practice teach will explore how you choose and arrange exercises to create an integrated experience of yoga and mindfulness, and how you engage with students in your classroom. You will have 25 minutes to teach a small group of your colleagues. For this practice, feel free to utilize prepared notes, but do not read from a script or from the manual. Please continue teaching for the entire period, even if your planned lesson finishes early. Set up your teaching space so that you can see your students, and offer them modifications and choices based on what you observe during practice. Be ready to adapt your lesson plan based on what’s really going on in the moment.

- Introduction
- Warm-Ups: chosen and placed appropriately for the exercises you’re leading
- Postures: at least 3 postures, teaching one as if for the first time
- Breath Exercise: any from our training (Complete Breath, Balanced Breath, Ocean Sounding Breath)
- Mindfulness Exercise: any from our training (Mindfulness of Breath, Mindfulness of Sound, Mindfulness of Sensation), teaching as if for the first time
- Closing

While you should start with an introduction and end with a closing, in between you are free to choose and arrange elements from the techniques in our training in the way that best supports your teaching and the kind of experience you want to create for students. What do you want to share with students and how do you hope they will feel by the end of class? In choosing what you teach, consider both what will best support your growth as a teacher, and what exercises will create a coherent and integrated experience together.

Your instructors will be focusing their assessment on the skillful delivery of the following elements:

- A lesson designed with clear stages of Preparation, Foundation, Exploration, and Integration.
- Offering skillful, responsive choices to students.
- Cueing postures from the ground up, using the formula for coordinating breath & movement.

PREPAROTORY RELFECTION:

Prior to your practice teach, please write our your lesson plan, including not only the order and arrangement of exercises but also why you chose those elements and arranged them in the way you did. There’s no right answer to this, but it’s important to be clear about your aims and intentions in designing your class. For example, you might choose to teach Ocean-Sounding Breath because you want to integrate it with movement later on in your posture flow, or you might choose to teach the same technique simply because it’s one you want more practice leading with a group.

Please email this reflection to your co-teacher no later than the night before you teach (Tuesday May 3, 2022).

Timetable:

4:00 - 4:15: Gathering and moving into groups. It is imperative that you are on time for this session.
#1: Teach: 4:15-4:40, Reflection: 4:40 - 4:50, Return at 5:00
#2: Teach: 5:05-5:30, Reflection: 5:30 - 5:40, Return at 5:50
#3: Teach: 5:55 - 6:20, Reflection: 6:20 - 6:30, Return at 6:30
Breakouts until 6:45
Main room until 7:00

PEER RELFECTION:

After your practice teach, you’ll have a facilitated reflection session with your group. One participant will lead the session by following the prompts. You will have 10 minutes for this facilitated reflection process, followed by a 10-minute break for the next teacher to prepare.

1. For the teacher: Staying with your present experience as much as you can, what are you feeling right now?
2. For the teacher: Focusing on the positive aspects of this experience, what do you want to celebrate? What went well?
3. For the students: What did you enjoy about this experience? What did the teacher say or do that was personally impactful or helpful for you?
4. For the teacher: What challenges did you feel during your practice teach?
5. For the teacher: Would you like to hear from participants about areas of delivery that they struggled with, using the framework above. The teacher does not need to answer or explain anything, but can feel free to ask for follow-up or clarification.
6. For the teacher: What are one or two growing edges that you want to focus on in your teaching going forward?

When [state a specific fact or experience], I thought/felt [describe what happened for you personally - physically, mentally, or emotionally], and it would have been helpful for me to [state a way the teacher could potentially address your experience].

SOLO REFLECTION:

Within a day after your practice teach (by Thursday May 5, 2022) set aside time to write and reflect on your experience of teaching in relation to the lesson plan you set. What worked well? Are there particular things you did that helped your teaching unfold as you intended? Where did you adjust timing, content, instruction and why? How did it feel for you when something took you “off script"? Plans invariably change, and our goal here is not to check every box on your original lesson, but to notice and reflect on what helps you deliver as your intention as a teacher, and what helps you adjust on the fly in order to stay present and responsive to your students. If you have any specific questions about teaching techniques or challenges you encountered that you’d like to discuss with your co-teachers, include them here as well.

Please email this reflection to your co-teacher by Thursday May 5, 2022.

Co-Teacher Emails:
Barnaby Spring - bspring2@schools.nyc.gov
Stacey Haley - shaley@schools.nyc.gov
Kate Goldberg - ygoldberg3@schools.nyc.gov
Denise Lanier - dlanier@schools.nyc.gov
Leonardo Macias - lmacias@schools.nyc.gov
Marlene Morris - mmorris5@schools.nyc.gov
Lauren Levine - llevine12@schools.nyc.gov
Kelitha Spence-Bisi - kspence4@schools.nyc.gov
Steven Strull - sstrull@schools.nyc.gov
Jami Whiney - jwhitney@schools.nyc.gov