It was just onethose days on Monday. The kids were very rowdy, and just didn’t feel like listening to me. Sadface. Worse thing is, my program supervisor came in to observe me that day. I read over the observation notes and it lingered in the back of my mind the whole day – I didn’t even get much sleep that night.

But I suppose it ended up to be a good thing for the next day. I woke up and got to the school without enough sleep, so I was feeling pretty crappy the next day. Seemed the crappier I feel, the more assertive and pushy I get. I suppose it was because I didn’t want to deal with them at the moment, so I started adopting a “do it, or else” attitude. I don’t think that it’s a good attitude to have all the time, but in small doses, it can really help with classroom management!

Because the kids put me in such a bad mood the night before, I moved all their seats, put it up onto the screen, and said, “that’s your new seat”. I also made a powerpoint to remind them (establish?) about my classroom rules and to tell them a little about myself. I think the mix of establishing of rules and the moving of their seats really helped establish that I am the teacher, not just the student teacher helping out within the class. Based on Wednesday’s lecture and my classroom observations, I know that these kids will talk a LOT and will need to be quieted and have their focuses redirected often. Fortunately, the stand-there-and-stare works well as of Wednesday – I’m glad, since it hasn’t worked in the past.

What’s great is that some of the students seem to be trying harder because I’m teaching, rather than my master teacher. I have one of the “bad” kids – he gets sent to in-house suspension and S5, the discipline office, all the time – but when I assigned the class a powerpoint, he took his computer and book to the back of the room, sat in a seat, and finished it. He usually doesn’t do much work in the class, but I was glad to see that he made the effort to finish the work in time.

The seat changes were to isolate the talkers from the other talkers, but not completely cut off conversation in my classroom. I still like random, idle chatter, but they’re much quieter now during my time to talk.  Maybe I should have taken my master teacher’s advice much earlier.

I also got to meet a lot of the administration of the school.  The principal kind of just shook my hand and sped off.  The VP of students did that, but stayed a bit longer.. and the VP of discipline talked to me for quite a bit.  I met the nurse, who's opening up the school clinic soon... and I met the 10th grade counselor, who seemed like a decent person. 

I also observed a whole bunch of teachers, but that'll wait as I want to stop writing now.  So far, I've been in about 5 different teachers' classrooms, and some are more interesting than others.  

So I began to do the teacher thing with 3rd period.  I took attendance.  I called on students to read through the book.  Handed out of those Fs.. okay, I haven't given away an F just yet. 

I met with 3rd period on Wednesday, and that definitely was a challenge.  It's somewhat difficult to control the class, although I'm thinking that it's a select few that keep on going after I tell them to stop.  I'm giving direct commands and in a firm voice, but it's not working well with some of the louder kids.  There's a talkative kid in the back - since he's talking a bunch, his friends that sit around him talk as well.. it's like a disease that slowly spreads when left unchecked.  They will quiet down when I walk near them, but if I need to be in the front of the class... yeah, you see the problem.  <3 proximity.

Don't get me wrong though, there are a lot of quiet kids in 3rd period.  They do their work quietly, listen, and answer when called on.  I'm just worried that because of the more talkative/disruptive kids, they become distracted and their concentration is broken.  And generally, the quieter kids are the ones getting the grades, while the louder ones getting the failing grades.  If you read my last entry, you know how easy it is to get an A in the class..

In general, they are a hyperactive, talkative group, and the assignments/lessons that are given to me by my resident teacher don't work well with this group.  A lot of the time, it's busywork - read the chapter, get the worksheet, answer the questions on the worksheet, and turn it in.  Pretty boring stuff - if I don't care for it, how can I expect my students to care for it?  It also doesn't help that my resident teacher has all of his lesson plans in his head, and generally makes them up the night of.  I leave right after 3rd period for my classes on the UCD campus, and he goes to bed early (see: 9PM), which is generally when I get back home.  Boo for no lesson planning! :(

We'll see how tomorrow goes.  Hopefully it gets a little better.

As for 4th period, my secondary placement (which is an English Language Learner class), as I was helping the kids out on a worksheet (hoorah!), I started to see that they're not really learning much.  A lot of them are just randomly answering the questions without much thought.  As I corrected a student's worksheet, I saw that most of the answers were wrong.  I asked if they guessed - they said yes.  I asked if they understood what this word, and this word, and this word meant - they said no.  This concerned me because for the last two weeks, they've mostly been doing this kind of work individually.  When I started to explain words and breaking down the questions, a lot of them began understanding what it was they were supposed to be doing and answering.

It surprised me a TON, and I definitely need to talk to my resident teacher for that class.  He's a good teacher who connects with his students VERY well, but I'm not sure if they're actually learning anything in his class - that's the point of school, right? :)

Random firsts:
1. Sent in a copy request to the office!  YEAH!
2. A student took only one try to guess how old I am.

So I got up late today (7:15 to exact), only to get to school at 8:00 and realize that Mondays are CPT days, meaning that the teachers have a meeting from 8-9:20 and the kids get to start school a bit later. On the bright side, I got an hour nap before the day started.. :)

I'm still observing classes, and starting today, I'm starting to see the differences between the regular and ELL classes.  The regular class has lessons on the scientific method, observation, and inference, while the ELL class is still getting assignments on bookwork.  We did a reading/multiple choice on the common cold today, just to get the kids used to the question format of the high school exit exam.  I understand that it's important to have the ELL classes heavily focused on vocabulary, test format and textbooking, but I'm wondering when they'll be able to science labs, activities, etc.  I guess I'll see as the year goes on.

I'm also seeing that periods are totally different.  The 1st period class is totally dead and silent - we have to pick on them to have them do anything!  Maybe it's because they're still waking up .. or maybe it's just because they're quiet - but either way, they're sit there and it's a challenge just getting them to talk.  And when they do talk, my mentor teacher has to ask them to repeat it because they don't speak loud enough.  Hah.  That'll be a difficult class to take over, if I'm assigned that one..

On the other hand, 2nd and 3rd periods are much more social and talkative.  If my mentor teacher asks for a volunteer, someone will (usually) raise their hand and do/answer whatever's asked.  Quite the difference.

As it's only the second week, I'm still getting the feel of the school, the overall environment, the type of students, where they live.. it's still a bit weird because it's such a contrast from my high school, but hopefully the end of the week I should be better off. 

Unitrans still owns me for a little over a week..

And so, just as a reminder to myself:

- 9/16 - Philosophy of teaching + management paper due
- 9/21 - Shadow assignment due
- 9/21 - Back to school night (5pm)