Weekly Blog Post 6

This week I had the opportunity to do something that I really enjoyed and that I think was super beneficial for my teaching carrer: I basically had an entire class all to myself for an entire period! My cooperating teacher went home sick for the day so I was left to my own devices with the class. And while all that was planned was a simple Jeopardy game to review for a test, it was great being the actual leader in the classroom. Everything seems to feel extremely fake and simulated... probably because it is. But this experience felt real for the first time. The person assigned to watch the class after she left came in and out intermittently during the period while I conducted the class. It flet great and I think it seemed to go pretty well. They were listening to me and responding when asked.

This is the first time that I have been really left alone with the students and it definitely made a difference. It was interesting to see how quickly their full attention turned to me, rather than to my cooperating teacher through me. Anyway, it was just a good experience for me that I am extremely grateful for this quarter.

This week I also spent some time in the other english classroom. Always interesting to see the differences in classroom arrangement and teaching style. And with that, again, I find myself seeing teachers respond to students in two extremes: either over reacting about something I would perceive as a small problem or not reacting at all to something that I would see as larger problem. After discussing this with my cooperating teacher, I do believe a lot of it has to do with being with the students every day versus me only being here two or three times a week. It's still odd to see.

I also watched one of these teachers argue with a student again, which always makes me cringe. It doesn't seem affective to me. And it almost seems like students keep doing it to get a rise out of the teacher. I just keep thinking, "Do not engage!"

Something I learned about teaching this week is that giving students respect will illicit respect in return. I even had a short conversation with a student about this. He had mentioned that he was going to be good for the period when I asked him how he was going to do today (he's generally a really loud student). He said not to worry about anything because he respected me more than he respected the cooperating teacher. While I told him he needed to respect her simply because she is the teacher, it still seemed like a compliment. He said he could tell that I respected students, so it was easy to respect me back. Interesting to think about.