Week 10! We did it!!!

I'm starting to feel like I have less and less to write about. As the school year winds down, so do the activities in the classroom. But, here it goes!

Highlight: Reading! Literally. On Thursday of last week I spent 45 of the 55 minute period reading to the juniors from The True Confessions of a Part-Time Indian. This fit into the end of their unit exploring Alexie's different perspective of settling in the West. The reason I spent most of the period reading is that is the best way to get the students attention. Never has the junior class been quieter or more attentive than when I read to them. They were putty in my hands. It's true: no one ever gets sick of getting read to. This was a great experience for me and the students loved it as well. We got about a quarter into the book before I had to stop and they were responding very well to it. I hope some of them will search out the book on their own and finish it.

Something that made me think differently about teaching was a short conversation I had with the long-term sub I have been working with this quarter. She has had a career before getting her masters in teaching. After this long term sub position is finished, she isn't sure she wants a full time teaching job. I personally love teaching. Yes it has been difficult at times and students can be a pain, but I KNOW this is what I want to be doing. It just feels right. So it was interesting to see a different perspective where I don't think her heart is fully in it. It makes me question her decision to become a teacher in the first place.

An approach I plan to use in the future is reading to the class. I will have these juniors again next year as seniors during my student teaching. I am glad that I learned this about them now. While it may extend the time needed in class for reading, at least this way I will know they have read it because I read it to them! When we do Beowulf next year I plan to do most of the reading in class as well as incorporate a graphic novel version of the book. This should hopefully be enough to keep all the students up to speed and engaged in the book.

A perplexing situation I had this week is dealing with one student in particular. He is hard to handle to say the least. I am hoping over the summer he will mature a bit more, but in the case that he doesn't I need to think of way to get him to be less disruptive of the class. He's big and he is loud. I have tried talking to him one on one a few times this year, but that usually doesn't even last to the end of the period. The teacher I am working with will often just send him out of the classroom, but honestly, that seems like what he wants. So, I may try talking to him again at the beginning of the year to try and set him up to be better in the classroom. I am hoping that creating a personal connection and trying to work with him on this issue will help the situation.

Week 9: Corndogs and Hormones

Week Nine! Here it is! Woo hoo! The final countdown! The last stretch! So close to done I can almost taste it! Or... maybe that's just the spaghetti I am currently eating. Either way, this quarter as has been madness (both good and bad) and this is my second to the last post for the quarter. And, needless to say, I am ready for a break! Anyway. This week was again pretty light on class time as Friday there was no school. But I do have a few lessons from Thursday to discuss and I had my observed lesson on Tuesday which I will also talk about. Also, kind of at a cross roads with that I need to do for my placement next year...

Thursday was a bit of a fiasco to be honest... It was a half day for the students, so after lunch there was an assembly and then after that students had a free day in the school to just hang out, play games, watch movies, or go chill out on the football field. This was all fine. I was looking forward to getting to get to know some of my students better. But, the problem was an epic miscommunication had happened with my observer. While I thought he was talking about Thursday the 30th, he was talking about this Thursday. So he showed up right before the assembly was supposed to start. Which was fantastic. If it had been any other normal day, we would have made it work. I could thrown together my lesson pretty quickly. But being as there would be no students in the classroom, it was kind of impossible. And while we got it all figured out, that was probably the most stressful few minutes of my life.

Tuesday was a completely different story! I was teaching and getting observed as planned! And, as far as I'm concerned, it went great. Especially for the maturity level of the material and the fact that they have one week of school left. They were more wild than they usually are, but it was kind of challenging and kind of fun also. I think it was a good experience, especially in front of a supervisor to see how I managed the class. While it was far from perfect, I am still just a student! So, I feel I did pretty well considering the circumstances.

Also, there is a possibility that I may need to change my placement next year, but that will hopefully be resolved soon. My cooperating teacher has two sections of AP English Composition and is concerned about me doing my student teaching in those classes. But I think we may be able to work out a co-teaching situation for those two classes and I will take on her Juniors and Seniors on my own. So, should be interesting!

I learned that I need to be on top of things myself this week. I can't rely on others and I need to make sure to clarity, in all situations, rather than just assume we are always on the same page. And a teaching technique that I need to learn to apply is a few re-directing skills. And hopefully they will become more apparent and clear to students as I teach more.