Week 11

    Week 11 has came and went, but another solid week of teaching has also came and went. Monday I was not at school as I was at my grandma's funeral in Wisconsin so I was at school for four days this week instead of five. This week I taught all of the morning subjects, which includes Daily Language, Social Studies, Science, and Literacy Studio. I would say that I felt pretty well prepared for each day of my teaching as most of these subjects have been mostly straight forward to teach. We have a curriculum that we follow for Science, Social Studies, Daily Language so for these subjects I basically follow our curriculum which makes preparation for these classes straightforward. Literacy Studio is kind of a cool idea in my opinion. Basically it is an hour and a half of students independently working on reading and writing goals. Students make reading goals with the teacher about once a month which is recorded in a binder by both the teacher and the student. Then, during Literacy Studio, students work on these reading goals, do independent reading, and work on other writing and reading activities such as blogging on the class blog or writing stories. I really like this activity because it gives the students a lot of choice in their work activities and also encourages them to get large amounts of reading in, which really helps with their love of reading and their concentration on these reading goals. The students really focus well on these goals and usually get a lot of reading and goal work done in this time, which would be surprising for some third graders, but these students really can focus and work well on these goals. Students also receive incentives for finishing their reading goals, such as class cash, and pizza certificates to Pizza Hut for each goal they finish.
   On Wednesday I was able to teach completely independently in the class again, my teacher was called over to the fifth grade classroom to sub for an hour and a half so I was able to teach without my teacher in the room which as Dr. Snoeyink said last week is really a great opportunity whenever it happens and I think something that is constructive to my teaching. This week I have continued to work on my behavior management with the students. I think that it is going well, but a large part of that is also because of the routines and procedures that have been laid out by my teacher. I have been attempting to keep track of these procedures and routines in order to use them in my future classroom as well.
   Thursday was an interesting day at school as well, the choir was going around to all the schools in the district putting on a concert so all but one of the girls in our class were absent all day, meaning that we only had 8 students! At the end of the day we were able to go to our choir's concert which was really great. I was so impressed by them and really felt so proud of my student's work in choir and their great talent. Friday Mrs. Hysell was able to come and observe my social studies lesson which I think went well and I enjoyed meeting with her. My hope is that you will now be able to understand a little more about my class now that you have met them and seen them in action Mrs. Hysell. This week really helped me in my confidence to begin full-time teaching which begins next week (this week is Spring Break). Full-time teaching will of course lead to a large amount of preparation each day, but I think that it will be very rewarding once I get into the swing of teaching. This week has also been filled with job applications as so many job opportunities have been coming up as of late. Job applications really get tedious after awhile but it feels good to at least get my name and information out into the job world.

Week 10

   Wow, week ten already? How has this happened so fast? It's been a great ten weeks thus far though. Week ten was a really great week. This week I was teaching all but one of the morning subjects and this coming week I will be teaching all of the morning subjects. Monday was a normal day in which I was able to teach my normal subjects. I have been pretty happy with how teaching has been going lately. The students seem to be respecting me more as they get to know me more, they come to me with many more concerns and questions than they used to and they overall just seem more comfortable with me. One thing that I do need to work on is to transition them from seeing me as the kind of cool college kid who does a little teaching and a lot of helping, to a more teacher figure. I think that this needs to happen because currently my image with the kids is pretty casual just because I started out having a lot of time to talk to them and to see what interested them, which was good at the time because I needed to build relationships with them.
   Tuesday was the day where we had a bunch of snow, but we still had school. My teacher who lives an hour away did not come into school because she did not want to risk the drive (a good idea considering I was almost in two accidents). Because of this we had a substitute and I was able to teach the entire day. I really enjoyed teaching the entire day, I was able to take a lot more control of the classroom and try to implement some of my thinking in the class. The kids also did really well! They focused so well and really worked together well, I was so proud of their work and what they did together. But teaching all day was a really great experience and I enjoyed it, I'm secretly hoping that my student teaching placement will have some job opportunities coming up in the next few months because I think it is a great school and I really admire how the school is run overall.
   Later in the week, on Thursday we had a bit of a problem with our service dog, Logan. Logan has been doing pretty poor in his job responsibilities lately. He has been wandering around the room, trying to get kids' food, and really just not paying attention to the student he is supposed to be working with. Anyways, my teacher was joking around with a student because he was whining and Logan came over and nipped the student, which is obviously the last thing that a service dog should do. He didn't draw blood, but he did leave a mark. Logan is now going to be leaving for awhile to get re-trained, but thankfully the students' parents handled the incident well because this is something that cannot happen. The next day we had Logan's trainer come in and observe him and the decision to re-train him was made. So this was a side of having a service dog in the classroom that is usually not talked about and usually (hopefully) doesn't happen. But it's something that nevertheless we had to talk about. But overall it was a great week of teaching and I am really grateful for the opportunities I had to teach, considering that I was able to teach for an entire day as well as the mornings of many other days in the classroom.
-Nate

Week 9

This week was the first week of ISAT testing for Memorial School. Since I am placed in third grade this meant that my students were taking ISATS for the first time. The students were quite nervous during the week for the tests, but after taking the first one on Tuesday they came to realize quickly that they were well prepared for the tests and from then on there was very little talk of nervousness about these tests.

This week I started teaching social studies daily in our class as well as our Daily Language segment of the day. Both of these segments usually are the first two activities are class does during the day so it was enjoyable to get back into teaching and go back to some real teaching activities as opposed to just observing all day. My teaching went well all week, it took me a few days to get into the routine of how specifically certain activities during the day went. But overall I really enjoyed teaching again and I think the students enjoyed the fact that I was teaching some.

One thing that I found out today about my school is that the school has gone through a lot of heartbreak this past year. Early last fall I student passed away after getting a severe case of the flu and late last fall one of the fifth grade teachers committed suicide. My teacher brought these facts up to me today while talking about some of the anxiety that she sometimes has in the classroom and it really hit me hard that the school has gone through so much that I had no idea that happened. I think that the teachers are really doing well in coping with this now considering that I had no idea what happened, but still what a few horrible months last fall that this school went through.

On a more positive note I was very excited with the progress I was able to make with my students this week and in growing in my relationships with them. I think that I really got to know more of them better this week and I think that they feel more comfortable with me as well. It’s definitely easier to get closer to students more quickly when there is only sixteen students, but it also helps when I am taking on more responsibility as this leads the students to be able to trust me more quickly and realize that I can also instruct them and help them in their work.

            I think that one area of my teaching that I’m always looking to improve in is classroom management. This is an area that my cooperating teacher seems to be such a natural in. I think that my teacher is so respected by the students yet she gains this respect from treating the students’ fairly not by yelling at them like some teachers do. It seems that this skill comes so naturally to my teacher but I’m sure that it has been learned over the years as well. Sometimes when I am teaching I feel that I am somewhat in control of the class, but that the students just don’t do as good of work or are as focused as when my cooperating teacher is in control of the classroom. I think that I usually am pretty decent at classroom management, but if a class is super chatty or they are just super loud I feel that I struggle sometimes with keeping them in control. I think this is a pretty common problem to have as a student teacher, but still an area that I really want to improve on and that I hope to do better in as I continue in my teaching.

Week 8

    So, the start of a new placement, and a goodbye to my first placement. What a week last week was, learning another set of student names, getting to another teacher, and re-learning procedures once again in the classroom. I was quite unsure of what this new placement would look like and whether it would be another good placement after having a good first placement. After this week I can say that I am really excited for the next nine weeks and what these nine weeks hold for my teaching and for my time in the classroom.
   I am placed in a third grade classroom at Memorial School in Tinley Park, Illinois. There are two other third grade classrooms in our school and our school is made up of K-5. Our classroom currently has 16 students. There is such a low number of students because there is a service dog in our room. His name is Logan and he works with one of our students who has spina bifida. This student is very independent and in the opinion of my teacher really does not need a service dog as she is able to move around on her own and really tries to a lot of things on her own. But we do have a service dog so any kids in the class at the beginning of the year who were allergic to dogs or scared of dogs were moved to other classrooms. I have really enjoyed getting to know my students this week, they've really been enjoyable getting to know. I've also really enjoyed getting to know my cooperating teacher. She has been teaching at Memorial for 13 years and is a very experienced teacher, but still a teacher who really is a great educator and tries her best to bring a great education to these kids. I have been very impressed with how the school is run and how effective the procedures that happen in the school are. The school is very well run overall and I have been impressed by how the school works overall. We also have an aide in our classroom in the morning and an aide in the afternoon, both whom are tasked with working with our student with spina bifida.
   Throughout this week I was able to learn about the students in our classroom and their backgrounds and where they come from. I also was given the opportunity to teach a bit of social studies and a bit of language arts when my teacher needed to step out of the room or talk to someone else so it was a bit of a small transition which was nice. I also really enjoyed getting to know my students, my teacher uses a lot of games in the classroom which I was able to take part in at times and I really enjoyed working in my relationships with the students and getting to know them better. One big change from this placement from that of my first placement is that the school dat is about an hour and fifteen minutes longer, so that was definitely something that I need to adjust to as the day is quite a bit longer than I got used to with the first seven weeks. Overall, I am very excited for this placement and I can't wait to get to know my students better and to improve overall in my teaching this semester.