I have weekly reflections that are required for student teaching. I'm gong to be posting them here as well to help keep people who are interested up to date.
Prior to student teaching, Reflection 1
The first meeting for student teaching was extremely stressful for me. As all the requirements for the entire semester were laid out before us, I began to panic. I wondered how I was possibly going to get all this done. There is so much surely I will forget something. I'm still concerned, but not as much as before. I have my calendar where I've laid out some of the more looming projects, I'm going to start making lists so that I know what work is the most pressing, and I'm going to start on the large projects before I think I need to. I think that student teaching will be a fun and valuable experience, I just hope I don't get caught up in the stress.
Prior to student teaching, Reflection 2
After spending two full days with my class and my teacher I am considerably less stressed about student teaching. I quickly remembered how comfortable I am in this setting and how much fun teaching is. I can already tell what some of the challenges in the class are going to be. There is one student who has autism. This student is extremely smart and able to do the work, but he needs extra prompting and attention at times. This is not difficult to do while my CT is teaching, but it will be hard to attend to him as needed when I'm teaching the class. My CT told me to step in, not to feel like I had to sit at the back of the classroom and observe, so I did. I was following her discipline model and gave a student a write-up. The student got mad at me and began to cry. I tried to talk to her about it but it seemed as if she was crying just for attention. There is going to be a bit of a struggle with this student. She seems to feel that the rules don't apply to her like they do to everyone else. I did make an effort later in the day to praise her for promptly starting work and walking quietly in line. Although she may be difficult to deal with, I don't want her to feel that every time a teacher notices her is when she is being difficult.
Week 1
I spent this week getting to know the students, my CT, and the other 1st grade teachers. I spent more time working with the child with autism and had a couple more struggles with the student who cried last week. I stepped in a few times and continued a lesson when there was an unforeseen interruption in the class. One day a student from another class was brought into our classroom because he could not get his work done in his own classroom. My CT had to deal with it immediately. I stepped in and continued the focus poetry lesson. We were spelling out words on the word wall. The students were distracted by the interruption and did not respond immediately to me. I stopped and reminded them that they were to treat me the same way they treated the CT. Just because she had to deal with an interruption did not mean that class stopped and they got to goof off. I feel like the students are trying me, which is perfectly normal. I am not hesitating to discipline or reward them. They get stickers for appropriate behavior and get write-ups from me, just like they do from my CT. I had felt like my CT was giving the students too many chances before she followed through with discipline at the middle of the week, but on Thursday and Friday it didn't seem that way at all. All I can do is try to make sure that I remain consistent with what I do. Overall I like my CT and the students in my class. I think this is going to be a great placement for me.
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