The end is in sight!

I cannot believe how busy I have been! Ordinarily for student teaching I would have two weeks where I was planning and teaching all of the subjects within the classroom. However, I was doing that by about the second week. So I have been teaching the full load for about eight weeks. Let me tell you...I am exhausted. It is especially hard now that I am not teaching all of the time. I don't have much to plan (just finishing things up) and my teacher is so far ahead that she doesn't have much for me to do either. So here I am blogging again!

I have been looking toward the next step. I am in the process of applying for a substitute position within the district for the remainder of the school year. I am also applying for Teach for America for next year. Monday I find out if I made it through the second round. Cross your fingers!

I need a secretary

So I have officially begun working on reading/literacy centers with my students. The first few days were a little chaotic (which is to be expected) but it is getting better. However, I need more time! What else is new? There is never enough time in the day, but with centers, students who do not finish with their work in that short 10 minutes are still way behind and everyone who can keep up is bored waiting for them to finish, which is exactly what I was trying to avoid. I don't think they are getting enough whole-group instruction now. Right now I have a group working on reading with me. I think I need to do more circulating because they are not quite advanced enough to actually read the directions and do the activity. grr. I also wish that I could get them away from the worksheets that go along with the curriculum, but still feel confident that they will succeed by the end of the week. Hmm...

Plantistic

I would just like to send out a heart-felt thank you to every teacher I have every had. I know that teaching was going to be work. I expected that. But there are so many details that most are not aware of, unless they themselves are a teacher. Not only do you need to plan the activities for the day, you need to ensure that each child feels a part of the classroom community, has a chance to succeed, learns manners, appreciates others, make sure that each student succeeds in each standard (there are about 800 different standards for each grade), they are expected to continue their professional development with meetings, classes, and conferences, they need to make copies, run overheads, read their 50 emails a day, and then do it all again the next day!! Plus I know that with conferences and unit tests (even with two of us in the room) if I were a real teacher I would have worked about 10-15 unpaid hours for this week. Wow. Actually, I have to pay the school for this experience (don't even get me started on that part) but what other profession do you know of that someone would spend hours outside of their workday to prepare for the little minds that will be there tomorrow??

At this moment I am planning a social studies unit. This task has proven to be very exciting, yet fun. I have never really thought about all the work and planning that goes into just 30 minutes of student learning. Not only that, but I have never had the experience of writing even a single lesson plan in social studies, and here I am about to embark on a monumental endeavor of teaching 8 year olds about the ancient civilizations of Egypt and China. I think the students will really enjoy it. I also appreciate the subject for really lending itself to my own creativity. I am just thankful that there are actually other people out there to do this job!!

busy bees, er butterflies

Wow! I cannot even believe the last two weeks that we have had. Last week we tested the bejesus out of these little brains. They did a unit test in reading, a benchmark assessment in reading, spelling tests, math quiz, ule screening, and on and on. They did so well though. This week has been crazy because of no school on Monday and then we went to the Butterfly House yesterday afternoon. It was an awesome time! I was a little worried about our kids and their behavior (I am sure every teacher worries about that with field trips) but they were great! We had a very good afternoon.
However, with our new reading series every day is laid out for each week. It makes it very difficult if we have no school on one day to accomodate and get everything in. It is just one of the thousands of decisions I am getting used to making on a daily basis.
Since my cooperating teacher is so crazy organized, I had been prepared in advance and keeping up. However that long weekend got me a little too relaxed and I do not seem to have anything ready to go for next week yet. Looks like it will be a late night at school.

New arrangement!

This may not seem like a huge deal to anyone not involved in education, but last night after school I got to move the desks! The students have always sat in boring old rows. It is too difficult to work in groups or pairs when all the desks are in neat rows. So after school last night my cooperating teacher said that she was open to me rearranging whatever I wanted to. So I got to seat the kids in the way that I would like to and by whom I think would work well with. It is a small guesture made by my cooperating teacher to make me feel like I actually have my own class. It is very exciting.
I got to meet some parents this morning. Interesting...a few of them were crazies (as suspected). The one that I just knew would be nice as can be (and normal) absolutely was. I did feel a little awkward though because my cooperating teacher had to go outside for morning duty so I was in there with the kids and their parents. I felt like I should be entertaining them. I didn't know what to talk about or what to say. It was strange. Next week we get to schedule student conferences and begin report cards. Should be quite a learning experience. I will also be sitting in on an IEP (individualized education plan) meeting for a special needs student in our room. I will be learning so much!

What page?

Here is the issue I am struggling with today...where should I draw the line with late/no work? I have two or three students who ALWAYS hand in their work late or not at all. Usually when we do things like worksheets in the classroom I give them back to the students for corrections. Often I get a confused look and, "What spelling sheet?" "huh? What math page?" I understand that this problem is not one unique to my classroom. It will continue to happen throughout adult life for some of these children. However, I am wondering for the pace of my class and for my own personal sanity, where do I draw the line? If I just make them not do the work (worksheet grades are not usually kept) they will get out free-I don't have to worry about it either. Win for both of us right? Not exactly. Because then when we move on to the next topic and they have not completed the practice for the previous topic they are not ready and subsequently fall farther behind. However, when I hand the sheet back for corrections and recieve it back 5+ times with the answers still not correct, is it even doing them any good to do it a 6, 7, or 8th time? Where does fixing/finishing work stop being helpful? Is there even a solution??

Where did Monday go??

Well I have added math to my language arts and morning meeting. Now I have almost the entire day. Our school alternates a unit of social studies with a unit of science, so the only thing I have left to add is science/social studies. Monday is our busy day anyway, but yesterday I had my first observation and we had vision screening. I don't even know where the day went!! The observation went pretty well. I was a little frustrated because I had been trying to use the SMART board instead of the overhead. However, I couldn't get all of them to work and then I couldn't find one. It was maybe not the best day to try that differently. Oh well.

Now our school counselor is doing a character lesson with the kids. She is an interesting lady. One of the first days I was here, she had on a dress that was far too revealing in the chest area. She also does these presentations for the kids. I think she tries to make them interesting, but they are pretty juvenile-below their level even. She reminds me of someone presenting a character lesson that was required in freshman year of college. She also calls them "guys" all the time, which drives me nuts!

I am feeling much more comfortable in the school. I have some teachers that I usually eat lunch with and we chat about lessons and students. It is a nice time of the day. I can't wait to have my very own classroom!

Assessment asseschmeshment

All week we have been reading a story about a girl who is deaf. We have had vocabulary words like deaf, signing, language, cultures, and celebrate. They can parrot the meanings back to me and use them in a sentence, however they cannot seem to circle the definition on a piece of paper. We have been concentrating on the main idea and details of the story. Not only did we practice this strategy on another piece of writing, but we have done it (together) twice. However, today on our selection test about 40% of the class still did not know what the main idea of the story was-even though I flat out told them as a reminder before the test!!! ARGH. It is so frustrating to try to be a reflective practitioner when you know that you have given them all the tools to be successful and they decided to go out to lunch instead. Maybe tomorrow I will have to try beating it into them. :)

My teacher had to leave early today for an appointment. We had our fifth grade reading buddies, so there was still another teacher in the room. But I did them ready, sang their goodbye song, and sent them out the door all by myself. Now I have as much time as I need, alone, in an empty classroom with technology at my disposal. I can't wait to have my own classroom!

Weary Bleary

What a day! I have worked the last two nights and I am getting stretched. It was a little rough getting out of bed this morning. However, I was revived when I was doing our morning meeting this morning and one of the girls said, "Mrs. (teacher) I think Miss Smith is ready to just be a teacher now." That pretty much made my day.
Yesterday I had to break out the tough love when we had a conversation about rules on the playground. One of them that we discussed in detail was the fact that when the bell rings, you run for the line. There is no stopping for any more playing, just get to the line. So lunch recess yesterday I was waiting at the door when the bell rang. I gave a five minute penalty (from our fun activity every Friday) to six kids! I was so mad, they know better. Then today coming in from recess we had another type of incident. Two of our students were caught holding hands during reading today. Then we were told that they were kissing on the playground. My teacher pulled them out into the hall to discuss with them the fact that kissing is just not something that is appropriate in school. She asked them what they had been doing and the girl looked at the boy and said, "Do you remember what we were doing??" Then the boy said to her, "Ok, I'll be the one to tell her." I don't know how she could even keep a straight face...haha!
We have a new student which I cannot quite put my finger on. She came to our classroom on the same Monday that I did. She is an ELL student. However, I honestly believe that she functions at a higher level than she prefers to reveal or work at. At times you give her directions and she will just stare at you like she has no idea. I do believe that she knows much more than she shows. It is quite frustrating. Today I tested her on sight words and out of 72 words, she missed 40! I just don't know where to start with her because I am having a difficult time diagnosing what would benefit her the most. Hmm...

Solo Monday

I am so excited about today! Although it is too bad that my teacher has to be gone for medical reasons, I got to pick the kids up by myself this morning. I got them from outside, did our warm up and attendance and then took them to music. It may seem small, but it was a very big step for me. Also, this afternoon there is a grade level meeting to set goals for the next school year. The principal has agreed that I do not need to be there, but still insists on hiring a sub for my teacher, even though she will still be in the building. So I will be teaching all afternoon while she is at that. I do feel bad for the sub though, they will just be sitting and watching while I teach.

Taking the reins

Well starting Monday I will finally be teaching something! I will start with spelling and then work my way up to teaching all of the subjects. Next week spelling is mine! My supervising teaching is a crazy organizer though, so I will probably drive her crazy! She has her lesson plans finished up through the next unit!! It is probably just driving her bonkers that she doesn't have my lesson plans for next week yet. hehe. For the remainder of the week I will be working on finishing the individual reading assessments. The first few were much easier because as the students reading level progresses, the evaluation also gets progressively more difficult. However, to save time we have the students dictate and I scribe. Well I am getting tired of reading these little stories with no point and writing all of the students answers. I am a little over half way done.
Last night I experienced my first staff meeting. I am not sure if this is a practice that is district-wide or just within my school, but every month one of the grades is to prepare a presentation on a topic that is important to current education. I felt like I was back in freshman year speech class. The kindergarten teachers prepared a presentation on communication. I didn't learn much. I have a feeling that they will continue to be much of the same. Oh well. Then I got to be a part of setting the two main goals for this academic year for our school's impovement plan. That was pretty exciting. We will be working on who, what, where, why question and comparing and contrasting for reading. For math our focus will be telling time and creating and solving an equation for a story problem.

Tonight I am so excited to be getting together with my cohorts from my final education class. We spent nine hours a day together all last spring and now we have been separated since then. We shall have a beer and tell stories of our student teaching time thus far!

Student teaching here I come!

Well I have officially begun student teaching. I will be in this placement for appoximately 12 weeks. I am in second grade at Cleveland Elementary. I will use this blog site to document, vent, and invent my student teaching experience. Although I will discuss my students, their identities (and those of fellow teachers) will be protected.
Today is day two of my student teaching and I am bored! For about the first week or so I will only be observing. This is frustrating due to the fact that I have been observing teachers for four years now. I am ready to jump in and teach a class! Today is especially strange because my teacher has a substitute. He is from England and he talks funny! :) At least he is actually an educator with a degree though. It is strange for me to sit back and not lead the class with a sub. Hopefully soon I will be able to begin actual teaching and planning lessons!