At the beginning of the week, my goals for the week were to interact with the students more, meet more of the faculty, continue planning, and to take a more active role in front of the classroom so that the students can know (at least a little bit) what to expect from me. Although the week certainly wasn't devoid of its frustrations and challenges, all of those goals have been met in some way or another.
I was definitely more involved with the students this week than I have been in my previous visits, which has, of course, led me to think that this may be one of the biggest difficulties that I have to work with in the next few weeks. Figuring out the line between professionalism, accessibility, and my own personality is proving to me no easy task. Of course, I don't want to be to casual and buddy-buddy with the kids, but I also want to be friendly. Also, in general, I'm not a very upbeat or bubbly person, so joking with students without seeming cruel is a challenge.
This ties in to my discipline strategy as well; for Mr. "Smith", his discipline strategy is very rigid and focused on student behavior (i.e. each student should behave because they ought to) and disciplining flagrantly disruptive behavior, where I am much more concerned with the overall learning environment and student participation (i.e. behavior problems affect the group and therefore it is the benefit of the group that any individual should "behave").
For example, I chose to quietly reprimand a student, "Kara", during the very rambunctious last period class. I was following Mr. Smith's lesson for the day and the students were reading a short story aloud and then taking a quiz. I sat behind Mr. Smith's desk (as he always does) and followed along. Each time I looked up from the book, Kara, in the second row, was looking directly at me, or at another student, or at the ceiling, or...you get the idea. I finally had it, after she had been poking a male student in the back for a couple minutes and being a distraction in general, and hissed at her to "stop flirting!". I got the reaction I wanted and she followed along from then on out, but I have to wonder if I could have handled it differently or better.
I also had the chance to meet several more faculty members this week, and opportunity that I jumped on with gusto. I have been working with the fall play and, because of this interaction, am now on a first-name basis with the two faculty members in charge (*puts on sunglasses*...yeaaaahh!). I'm very excited to have more individuals that I can commiserate with (if nothing else) and also to bond with, share experiences with, and to speak with for second opinions. I hope that I can continue building these relationships, as I can already see that they will be key to me maintaining my sanity through the next ten weeks.
Even though I've been planning for the past several weeks, and heavily in the last week, I am still feeling kind of panicked and unprepared. Logically, I know that part of this is because I am young, new, and inexperienced, but it is also a result of my interactions with Mr. Smith. I haven't had the opportunity to review any lesson plans that he has used for the two novels I'll be teaching...because he doesn't have anything to show me. He has a well-worn way of doing things, and therefore has no need to put anything on paper. However, that has sent me into a blind panic since I have to do everything from scratch: the novels themselves, activities, and auxiliary materials. Coupled with the fact that I had worked on a unit plan for the term paper I'll be teaching, only to run into scheduling errors with the lab and have to re-do everything, I'm left feeling pretty freaked out. However, that is a very real-world issue that teachers must deal with from time to time, so I suppose at some point I'll look back on it as a learning experience and appreciate it.
Lastly, I was able to take a more active role in the classroom this week than before. Since I'll be picking up the entire class load the first week, I'll admit that I wasn't chomping at the bit to start a week early. I took the general classes on Thursday and was pleased, overall, with how things went. I think the students are happy to have seen me do something aside from chat with them from time to time and I had a very positive experience with one class that was a good ego boost for me: my 6th hour class only has seven students due to a weird scheduling glitch, and I was thrilled at how well the students behaved and saw that they were engaged and interested as they read the short story and their quiz scores reflected it. I stopped on occasion to ask questions and made the students reflect and asked questions, and it payed off - their class average was 112%! The last period, which I mentioned before, was more of a handful but certainly not a complete failure (I think their average was a 90-95%). Because of the teaching experience, I have a better idea of how I will tailor my lesson and my delivery to classes tomorrow.
My apologies if this post seemed a bit sterile; I should certainly think that my content will be a little more dramatic in the coming weeks!
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