I've been feeling stressed, and I feel guilty for complaining all the time! But the stress is getting to me, probably due to lack of sleep. Note to all you future student teachers out there: DO NOT WORK AND STUDENT TEACH AT THE SAME TIME!! It is as hard as they warn you! Thank goodness I love student teaching and my job, or I'd have given up!
Anyway, last week I got to start teaching my unit plan -- YAY! Unfortunately, the first day back from spring break, technology decided that it was going to be rude to my CT2 and I... Fortunately, it got fixed in time for the end of my lesson, so I still got to show Prezi to the students! We had to do quite a bit of rearranging my original timeline for the unit plan to fit it into the "real world" schedule, but it's working out well so far! I didn't realize how little 6th graders knew about searching the internet, though, so I wish I'd had time to do a mini lesson on that. They seemed to really enjoy the activity for primary vs. secondary sources, even though it was simplistic. I had them hold up the correct card (primary or secondary) in response to the source I showed them on the Prezi. They asked me to come up with more! I was happy that they were happy with something I did! ;-)
Wednesday we had a sub because my CT2 had a committee meeting, so I got to do a bit more teaching, as well as lead a guided reading group. It was fun, and I realized that I am getting more comfortable in 6th grade, finally :-) Despite being comfortable, my lessons are still very choppy, but I'll figure it out! My favorite lesson was when I put my acting skills to the test Tuesday, trying to convince the kids that the tree octopus was real - LOL! Thank goodness my CT2 was there to help along the gig, I would have burst out laughing and given up without her acting skills!!!
Wednesday afternoon was hard -- one of the students (male) was walking to the bus crying, so I pulled him aside. I was so worried, because it's got to take a good amount to make a 6th grade boy cry at school. I'd seen his football on the floor, and thought I saw another student push him, so I told the other student to keep his hands to himself, then tried to talk to the crying boy. He didn't want to talk much, though, possibly because he was scared that if he got the others in trouble, they would cause more trouble for him... after seeing them off to the bus, I went to the Lead Teacher (LT), since my CT2 wasn't there to talk me through what I could do/should have done. The LT called his house to let them know that something had happened, but he didn't want to talk about it. She told me to keep an eye on the boy tomorrow to see if he was OK, and she would let me know if she heard anything. I felt better after talking with her, since I knew that I didn't completely mess up by not getting the information out of him... situations like this are hard...
Thursday I got to go with my CT2 to a committee meeting! They're working on a schedule for the entire district, that includes an "intervention" time -- that's a time for no new instruction, as well as a time for students who need extra services to get pulled. It's very helpful, since then the students don't miss as much instructional time, and teachers don't have to worry about them falling even farther behind. I had no idea how hard it would be to plan a schedule like that!! There are SO many factors that go into it... it was interesting to see the debate about how much time each grade would get for each subject... of course science and social studies got the least, but not because anyone thought it wasn't important... it's just MORE important for students to be able to read and write. Even though in college classes, I was totally on the side of giving more time to those topics, I've kind of switched my views. Yes, science and social studies are important, but how can students learn those if they can't read and comprehend the information, or write about their findings? There's just not enough time in a school day for everything...
Today was my first math lesson. As I got started, the principal walked in with his iPad and sat down to observe! I'm pretty sure I said "Are you serious?!" out loud, oops... like I wasn't nervous enough doing my first math lesson... oh boy. How embarrassing. The lesson went pretty well, at first. I had them in groups to discuss some of the opening things, and they seemed to understand... then we got deeper in the lesson, and I felt like I lost any power I had to explain the concepts clearly. There was just so much involved! Then there was this whole debate about a square being a rectangle but a rectangle not being a square... and it was just rough. I got some feedback from my CT2 after the lesson, about making transitions smoother within the lessons. I think that will help me feel better as I'm teaching, so that I don't get flustered and lose my train of thought or momentum. She also said that I could have spent more time on that rectangle/square debate, because students don't get enough time to REALLY think about things nowadays. That debate would definitely have gotten them thinking! Oh well, I'm sure there will be more opportunities like that!
Now I'm off to try to relax for a bit, because there's no way I can improve my teaching when I'm up to my ears in stress, and that is definitely not fair to those students!
No comments:
Post a Comment