Reflection 10/25

This week was a rough week. I am glad that its over and that I have some time to relax and prepare for next week. I have been struggling with my home base classes behavior and the overall dynamic of them. The kids are awesome, but put them together and I feel like its chaos and beginning to get unmanageable. On Friday I ended up turning off the movie they were finishing and holding an emergency community meeting instead. We talked about what the problems are in the room and what were some ways that this could change them. I did tell them that there will be no more fun privileges like movies for a while and it will not come back until their behavior shows they deserve it again. On top of all that I have been feeling extremely sick and tired, but I have been trying to not let it show.

On a more positive note, I am continuously growing as a teacher and don't feel nervous at all any more when I am preparing to teach. I feel like I had another successful teaching experience on Friday even though I had to change up my plans a little bit. I am noticing that for the most part the students do not understand a lot of this grammar stuff I have been teaching as review (nouns, verbs) so I took some extra time on them and cut out some of my lesson for Friday to focus more on that. This in turn will affect what I do Monday and I feel like this way they will really be able to learn this stuff since its all things they do need to know in order to be successful. I have been pretty successful in keeping things together this week even though its been pretty crazy with all the unit planning, MEAP week tension, and all the extra stuff I had to fit into my schedule. I need to be able to juggle things in this profession and I am happy to see its happening.

This week I would like to work more on my time management and my ability to get things done, but not let it overtake my life. Even though I've been getting everything done I still feel like I overlook my own sanity in the process.

Reflection 10/17

This week went by so fast and was really great! Each week I feel more and more like the teacher. I was able to have a lot of time to teach lessons this week and I feel like I am improving each time in many aspects. My confidence level is reaching a comfortable level and I feel like I am able to control the class in ways that I wasn't able to before, such as getting them to be quiet before I begin teaching. I came up with a lesson plan that included verb charades and noun pictionary and I had a blast teaching and watching this lesson. I really enjoyed being able to include music, art, and kinestetics into a grammar lesson. I also feel like it was a good thing to bond with the class, because I was laughing right along with them. They are all great actors and artists :). I would really like to continue being creative and finding fun ways for the kids to learn! I truly do believe they learn better this way.

My weakness this week is making school (intern and 801/802 classes) my life. I am not really making the me time I need and I am beginning to struggle to find the time to do this as things become more demanding. I need to flat out schedule fun into my life I think, but not to a point where I get unfocused. I have always struggled with allowing school to become my life. I think its good that I am focused and driven, but I need to let up a little bit at times.

Something that would help me this week is taking some time and doing something completely unrelated to school and doing it somewhere away from my apartment. I think this will refresh me and allow me to not get so stressed out.

Weekly Reflection 10/12

This week was awesome! I have had some great experience and have been able to really feel like I am in charge in the classroom. My greatest strength has been planning and executing my plans. The opportunity that my CT has given me to plan for Friday and have the two class periods on my own has been great. On Friday, my CT needed to leave in the afternoon so I continued with my plan without her there. There was a sub in the room for support, but I really felt like the teacher! The students response to me being the teacher was great and I feel like this experience is going to help me in all aspects of my intern year. My confidence has been able to grow as a result of it. One of my favorite things to do is plan and come up with activities so I have been really enjoying the chance to do that as well.

I continue to work on discipline as the weeks go on. This week I tested out some of the things my CT advised me to do, such as pulling kids out to talk when they get disruptive and sending kids back to their seats during community meetings. My opportunity came up on Wednesday of this week and I did pull a kid out while he was being disruptive in book club. We had a good talk in the hall and I explained to him what our expectations for him were during book club. I feel like I had a moment to bond with that particular student and got a chance to see what may work for me. I do not really know if it did any good because he still had to call home to tell them that he was being disruptive even after I pulled him out. My goal for this week and the following weeks will be to find something that works for me and shows results, without being too harsh of course.

I have really learned that as the teacher, you need to be prepared with all questions that come your way and be able to explain everything in your lesson. I did a lesson on pronouns and they were specifically personal pronouns listed on the worksheet. They began asking me why her was not one. I ended up looking it up online and giving them the answer, but if I did not have the internet I feel like I would have not known the answer. The thing that would help me for this week would be doing the assignments I give in advance so I can tell if there are things that I need to know in order to effectively teach the lesson. I think that this will help me most in math, because I do not have a lot of confidence in my own personal math skills.

Weekly Reflection 10/5

This week I feel like I took my weakness from last week and turned it into another strength. My Friday lesson turned out to be a lot more time efficient and I did not feel like I had half the class sitting around doing nothing and the other half struggling to finish everything. I feel like I was able to pace myself better and having one extra activity really helped fill the hour and twenty minute Language Arts time period. Something that really helped was observing the time that my CT took for her own lessons like we were asked to do. I also think it helps for me to keep having back up activities like I did this week for when I get asked what can I do now?

One weakness that I am noticing is knowing what to do when it comes to disciplinary matters. Another team teacher found some scary things written in a boys journal, threats to him and the school. I was in the room at the time and he had asked me what I would do with something like that. I realized that my answer was go straight to the principal with it and I wonder if that's the best option in all cases. Where do I draw the line between things I deal with and things that get sent down for higher forces to deal with. This was an extreme case that I believe should have been sent down first thing, but I am really beginning to think about behavioral extremes that I may need to deal with now and in the future and how I would handle them.

Something that would help me this week is talking to the school councelor and principal to see what sorts of things they would like to know about rather than just the teacher dealing with. I would also like to talk to my CT's about disciplinary measures that they use and what suggestions they have for me to use.