So, I was trying to think back to my days in elementary school, middle school, and high school to remember if I ever had a student teacher in my classrooms. I don’t recall if I ever did specifically, but I think there were a few back in high school in other classrooms. This leads me to wonder how many Universities have teaching credential programs and if candidates are usually charged with finding their own placements. yuck.
Anyway, I have a feeling that my colleagues and I will be making lots of mistakes this year as we embark on our adventures as student teachers. We may end up just making some stupid mistakes, and I am coming forward to illustrate one of my own little mishaps today. Be nice. Or I’ll take a picture of my teacher face and post it. Mhmm, thought so.
My first experience instructing the class on how to do a fairly simple assignment went well, but there were a few hiccups. There were moments where I had to quickly add things to the instructions or the content because, strangely, I was nervous to be up in front of 36 juniors. High school kids can be very judgey. [And I don’t even care that “judgey” isn’t a word.] I did some of the accidental terrible things. Phrasing a question wrong so that the brave soul who shouts out an answer gives the wrong answer and feels dumb. Or saying things like, “Do you remember what we did yesterday?” Haha, I’ve realized that when you don’t have students participating in a lesson, half the time it’s probably because you asked a stupid question. Don’t worry, the real point of this story is coming up!
It’s down here…..
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I’m going for anonymity for my students here, but there are some great kids in this class. I think they have amazing personalities and talents, lots of passion and energy, but no one has taken the time to figure out how to harness or perhaps tried to give them better ways to demonstrate those qualities. Anyway, I was reading over the poem one of these (“bad kids”) students had written for the assignment. It was funny, not quite on topic, but I felt like that was sort of beside the point. He had done some work and this could be an opportunity to get to know him better and break down a barrier.
We started chatting along with one of the other students near by who was already finished. But, I got him in trouble because one of the other students was “being distracted” by our conversation. I felt pretty awful that this kid got in trouble for in some ways being respectful to me by humoring me with conversation. I apologized to him and said it was my bad. I even talked to the teacher about it a bit as well. All in all, I learned that there are good ways to handle a situation without pitting students against their teacher. And those are the things I’m most interested in learning to do.
We were assigned an “observation” hour, a “teaching” hour, a “prep” hour, and a “literacy” hour. We’ll be doing observations outside of the classes we’ve been assigned to as well. First period I get to watch, Second I teach, Third I will be going out to do observations, and Fourth is my Literacy hour. I will probably do additional observation during Fifth.
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Boyfriend may be coming back to CA sooner than I anticipated. I’m excited(!) but also trying not to get TOO excited. I won’t have many weekends like this one where I get to come home for 5 days and he won’t be in Santa Barbara with me.
Gingerisms 