Week 2 of Solo....Oh so different

nikkicookiebaker

And so begins the trials and tribulations of student teaching.  I may be exhausted, but I will reflect here....

There is a reason I love black and white cookies so much.  They have both chocolate and vanilla.  Even though I like the vanilla part more than the chocolate, I will always eat the chocolate side first.  While eating it is not a torture.  Hello it is a cookie after all! I equate it to how you have to go through some stuff you do not like to get to the good.  To say last week was stuff you do not like is an understatement.  It is still all a blur to me.  There were behavior issues that escalated, lessons that flopped, and an all around dead energy.  With little help from my mentor teacher to mediate the problems, simply because she was MIA for the majority of the week, I was forced to figure it out. 

                Well, at the dawn of a new week and plenty of rest, I was ready to start fresh and get to my vanilla side of the cookie.  Maybe it was because solo teaching ended this week or maybe because I knew we could only go up, I felt that I had a renewed sense of energy this week.  My lessons went better than expected and my students were producing great works.  While it took us two hours, we sat in the computer lab and created incredible PowerPoint presentations on different cultures.  They were able to use their notes that they had taken, and transfer them to the computer.  Many have had little experience with typing and couldn’t find a key if it were staring them in the face.  I knew it was worth it because when we were doing math today and one student came up to me and said that is what the person I was researching ate was well worth it.  Or it was when we were doing a science worksheet and a student said “Hey, Ms. Yewdell, that’s cause and effect.”  The science sheet was incredibly boring and a time filler, but I was so happy that there was cross curricular learning going on.  I strive in my own classroom for there to be those opportunities.  While it is much easier in a self contained classroom since you are in control of it all, if I am teaching one or two subjects, I want to know what is going on in the other classroom so I can help the students create a connection. 

Week 1 of Solo Teaching

Michael 1952

And so begins the trials and tribulations of student teaching.  I may be exhausted, but I will reflect here....

In third grade, the students have a ton of energy.  That energy can be productive and destructive. Dealing with it and making choices of how to deal with it is a hard battle.  You can be really lieutenant or a drill sergeant.  I like to assess each situation and deal with it on a case by case basis.  What I need however, is a clear set of rewards and punishments.  In my future classroom, I know from my experience here that there needs to be consistency with punishment and rewards.  When reflecting with my mentor teacher, she suggested that I be more strict with the students.  For those who are talking out of line or not on task give them a punishment or have a consequence to their action.  I cannot agree more with her.  However, the problem this week while solo teaching was finding those punishments and consequences.  In my current classroom there is no real consequence except for losing 5 minutes of recess or whatever you feel that moment.  The kids could care less and their behavior does not improve.  In the short 2 weeks of solo teaching, I am not going to set up a rewards and consequence system for the kids to forget when I leave.  From this experience, I know that this is a HUGE thing I must consider when setting up my classroom norms.  The students must have a CLEAR understanding that behavior A will result in consequence A, and behavior B will result in consequence B.  When behavior A happens in September or March the consequence will be the same in September or March.  Now, I just need to figure out how to set up that system.  Hopefully, I will get a job at a school where I like how the school wide system works. 

If the shoe fits....

dherrera_96

And so begins the trials and tribulations of student teaching.  I may be exhausted, but I will reflect here....

A little late, but one from my first placement.

How do you know it is right?  You just do.  Actually you don’t, but from each experience with my practicum and student teaching, I know that this is the right decision.  When I left my job at a fashion company, did I cry like a baby as I took the cross town bus back to my apartment?  No.  Did my eyes look like water buckets (they came up with that simile not me!) today around 3:55?  Yes.  These past 7 weeks have been such a wonderful experience.  Each day I was happy to wake up and each afternoon I left the parking lot with a smile on my face.  Even days when the students are misbehaving or I feel the pressure of the TPA, it still feels right.  That towel will not be thrown in. 

                I by no means am a great teacher, but I know one day I will reach that summit.  Just like my for my students, I set high expectations with the ideas they can be met.  I know that I will one day meet them.  I have filled my tool belt with so many great resources from teaching these past few months.  The strategies will carry me through teaching.  I cannot wait to implement them in my own classroom, hopefully 5^th grade. 

I know this experience will stay with me.  How could it now?  The students were so great.  They made my job so easy.  Yes, there were days where they could not exactly settle down from the excitement.  Yes, there were lessons that met blank stares.  Yes, there was subject matter I had no interest in teaching.  Set that aside, I loved every moment of it.  It all felt right, so right.  I am so grateful to have figured this out, or I would be sitting at my dead end job looking out on the Hudson adding a zebra tag to a boring crew-neck sweater.