Student Teaching Journal

I think I finally understand fully the meaning of that acronym. It was my first full week of school, and goodness gracious, I feel it. I can only imagine how I’ll feel next week after my first full week of teaching EVERYTHING.

Yesterday I had a pretty big fail with my first 3rd class due to a few different factors.

• 1) My introduction took half of the class period because it took the students a super long time to write on an overhead transparency. What I thought would take 3 minutes took about 15.
• 2) My “introduction” took so long that I forgot what else I was supposed to do, and my lesson plans are so BUSY with the objectives, standards, and materials on there that it’s super hard for me to find where I am.
• 3) When I was finding my place, I realized we only had 5 minutes left, which was only enough time to do my ending “if there’s time left” activity.
• 4) After I had the students line up, JA informed me that I had their ending time wrong and had to find something to do with them for another 5 minutes, which meant that I would have had 10 minutes to start something new with them in the first place.

UGH! When I was done, I told JA, “I won’t be doing any of that the same way. None of it!” She said that even though it wasn’t what I planned, it wasn’t a bad lesson, but she understood my distress. The next classes went better, and by the 5th time I did the lesson today, it was just fine.

Cute kid story of the day from yesterday: JA was talking about how people would fall asleep to “Papa Haydn’s” music after big feasts and asking the students how they feel after they eat a lot of food, digging for “tired” as the answer. One student raised his hand and answered, “Um, a little bit plump?”

Today I got to sub for JA while she took a personal day. I was kind of nervous in the morning, but I convinced myself that I’ve been a substitute teacher many more times than I’ve been a student teacher, and played the morning out that way. It was actually really nice not being watched and feeling like I had to explain everything I did. I definitely felt the difference of only having one teacher in the room, though. I had to eat my lunch in the classroom while I set up for the afternoon. Usually JA is so on top of all of that that I don’t even have to worry about it. The morning classes all would have been mine to begin with, but I used JA’s plans for the afternoon with the 2nd graders. They were tough. They’re not used to me teaching, and I’m not used to their behavior. I couldn’t get them to pay attention to me… I felt like a sub instead of their teacher. I guess it worked okay, but… meh. Let’s just say I was SUPER glad when the day was over.

After school, I walked down to Erika’s room, plopped down in a chair, and we both just vented for a good twenty minutes. That was nice. I’m so lucky to have a good friend right down the hall. I’ll miss her when I move over to the middle/high school.

I had students tell me today that I looked pretty, that my hair was messy a little bit, that I have a pretty voice, that when I sing I sound like church, and that they like when I teach. I got lots of hugs, which was really nice. One sad thing, though, was that I told a second grade class that I’d be their teacher next week, too, and they all groaned. I joked with them about it for a second and then had a day camp character education moment and said, “Actually, that kind of hurt my feelings.” As Nelly was leaving the room, she turned around and said, “I like when you teach us.” I’ve liked her from Day 1. Such a sweetheart…

I’m EXHAUSTED. It’s the weekend. I have TONS of planning to do. I’ll have to mix that in with visiting my family and Brenton’s family (not to mention Brenton), going to the homecoming football game, and playing some music with Emmanuel and Zach. It’ll be Monday before I know it.

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By Friday, I have to turn in a draft of three sections of my portfolio for seminar and write 12 lesson plans. Therefore, this will be a very short blog post with a lot of sentence fragments.

Yesterday: 1 kindergarten class and 3 5th grade classes. Kindergarten class was boring. Boring lesson… But oh well. I’ll try to make next week’s more interesting. My 5th grade lesson rocked and the kids loved it. I was going to do a listening activity at the end, but we didn’t get to it. That’s okay, though, because I think the lesson was complete as it was. I used a projector (which was pretty hard to get when there’s only one to go around the elementary and middle schools) and showed the kids videos of people/sailors singing sea chanteys while working on boats. Then they got to sing some sea chanteys and pull imaginary ropes and such. Through informal assessment, they seemed to understand everything I wanted them to grasp. I came home feeling pretty good yesterday.

Today: 2 kindergartens, 3 grades, and my first observation from Mrs. Hazel. This morning seems like so long ago I can’t even remember what happened. I remember that one of the kindergarten classes moved a little slow last week, so we continued our game of Hide and Seek with “Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone.” They love that… I remember one class went better than the other, but seriously, it was so long ago I couldn’t even tell you anything else. OH! I remember. One class was being super noisy and I was failing at getting them to be good students, so JA stepped in and showed me how it was done. Then she told me my voice is too pleasant and I need to find my ‘teacher voice’. Note taken.

3rd grade went pretty well, but I feel like I tried to pack too much into one lesson. A review of something we did last week took 10 minutes when I thought it would take 5. I jumped right in to a lot of activities with a song before teaching them the song. I just wasn’t quite on top of things. I did a lot of modifying as I went along. The good news is I had practice with two classes before Mrs. Hazel made it in to observe. The class she saw went the best out of the day. That class is always the best– partially because the students are wonderful and partially because I’ve done the lesson twice before I get to them. Mrs. Hazel gave me the following notes, among others:

• * My singing voice isn’t quite right for working with children yet. I need to find a voice without vibrato that they could potentially use themselves.
• * The number of activities I had in my lesson (playing instruments, singing, marching, and a clapping game) was perfect for the limited attention span of 3rd graders.
• * I should greet students, tell them what we’re going to be doing, and afterwords tell them what they accomplished. I tend to feel crunched for time and jump right into the lesson.
• * Instead of saying, “You’re a wonderful class,” I should give specific feedback about what they do wonderfully.
• * I should learn how to have more fun when a student does something wrong. Example: Instead of sternly saying, “Only say the words!” after a student claps when he’s supposed to echo me, I could be silly and say, “Did I clap?” I think this is something that would take a lot of practice.
• * I need to be careful about the order in which I do things. I tend to get excited about an activity and give students directions after it’s too late. Such as “Don’t play the instruments until it’s time!” after I’ve already passed out the instruments.
• * I should work some more on singing techniques like posture and head voice.

SO much to think about. And I’m sure I’ll think about it when I wake up at 3:00 in the morning and think it’s time to wake up. I’ve been doing that every night for the past week. Ugh. I have to work on lesson plans now, though! Work work work!

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I missed a day of blogging last week. Woops. Oh well… We’ll pretend that day never happened. (Except for the fact that it was a good step forward.)

I only had two classes today. Two kindergarten classes. I find those to be easiest because it’s all super simple stuff and starting from scratch, so I don’t have to worry about if I’m doing something JA has beat to the ground or if I’m moving too quickly. I did a lesson on beat. First, we sang “Brush Your Teeth” and talked about some different things in the world that keep a beat. Then we sang “Hey Diddle Diddle” and I tapped the beat on their heads as they held paper cutouts of either a fiddle, a moon, a dog bone, a dish, or a spoon. Then we did “One Two Buckle My Shoe,” which I was pleased to learn that they already knew and even more pleased to see that they could keep an internal beat by just showing me the numbers and then speaking the “buckle my shoe” and “shut the door” parts. Smart kindergartners. Then I taught “The Farmer in the Dell” and played the game of that with them. Saddest moment of the day: I heard a little five year old say, “Don’t pick a boy for the wife cuz that would be gay.” Five years old… Anyway, the first class did really well with the lesson. The second class did well until we played the game. Then they fell apart… But it was comforting to know that since it worked with the first class, it was just the group of kids and not my teaching that failed.

Come 9:30am, I was done teaching for the day! JA had three 4th grade classes after that, and I couldn’t keep my focus on anything. I was daydreaming, worrying about my lessons for the rest of the week, and not paying as much attention to her lessons as I probably should have been. But before I knew it, it was 11:00 and time for our 2 1/2 hour Monday break, which always flies by. I got some prep work done for later in the week. A great thing about working with JA is that all I have to say is, “I’m kind of stuck on what to do with kindergarten next week,” and she’ll list off a few ideas of things that would work well. I’m so lucky to have someone so helpful and supportive as my supervising teacher. She’s working on my first evaluation this week. She said she’d print it off and go over it with me before she submitted it. I can see that feeling really awkward, having her critique me… but that’s what I’m doing this for. And since she’s been giving me comments as we go, it won’t be like, “BAM! Here are all of the things that you do wrong!”

Teacher lounge discussions are starting to get to me. Last week I got to hear whose husbands shave what. This week I got to hear gynecologist stories. One of the girls at seminar last week said she doesn’t eat in the teacher’s lounge because of all of the negative talk about students. If I were to bail out on eating in the lounge, that wouldn’t be the reason. But I’m supposed to do everything my supervising teacher does, so… I’ll eat in the teacher’s lounge. I’m learning that when JA says, “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but…” it’s something that I probably shouldn’t hear.

By the time JA started teaching again, we only had an hour and a half left of the day. Three first grade classes, and they’re all great classes. I’m looking forward to teaching them next week. Cute kids… They seem to look at me as more of a teacher than a teacher’s helper, too, which is a good thing.

After school, I spent about an hour and a half getting ready for tomorrow. I think I went over my 5th grade lesson about three times in my head while I was there, and I’ll probably do it about five more times tonight. There’s one 5th grade class that I put a red star next to on my schedule because their behavior was wonky, so I’m trying to prepare myself for that. I think my lesson for them is pretty dimensional, though. I’ll review what they learned last week with JA. Then we’ll talk a little bit about sea chanteys and I’m showing them two 30 second clips from the 1965 Moby Dick so they can actually see how the sailors used chanteys. Then they’ll learn a chantey and then we’ll watch another clip of another kind of chantey and learn another chantey, sing it and talk about it. Then I’m going to have them listen to a choral recording (which I still need to find) and have them just jot down whatever it makes them think of– emotions, colors, things, whatever– and collect them. Sort of a form of assessment, which JA does very little of, but I think it’s a good thing. I think I’m ready for it.

I’ve gotten very little done tonight, but it’s the one day out of the week that I get to spend time with Brenton, so I’ve been taking advantage of that. He’s at the store right now, so I’ll be as productive as I can until he gets back.

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I don’t have time to be blogging, but I promised myself I’d do this every day. Will taking the time to reflect on my day make up for poor lesson plans? :-\ I’ll make this as quick as I can.

I started out with two kindergarten classes today. The first one was great. I got through the hole lesson (almost with time to spare), the children listened to me very nicely, and they had so much fun hiding/finding Fluffy! I made a few modifications from yesterday, which seemed to help a lot. The second class seemed to go just as smoothly, but we ran out of time. Not everyone got a turn to hide/find Fluffy, and we didn’t get to my last song/activity. So… I’ll have to modify my lesson for next week for that class so I can fit in the game for the second half of the class. JA had to talk to a couple of students in the classes once or twice, which I appreciate because she’s helping me, but at the same time, when she does that, I feel like my class management skills aren’t up to par. She didn’t give me any notes on the kindergarten lesson today, though, so it must have gone okay. Actually, she did leave me alone in there for a little while, which almost felt easier. A majority of the nervousness I feel when teaching comes from knowing that she’s watching. Which is silly, because she’s probably the best constructive criticism giver I know.

Oh… Silly kindergarten story. The first class I had was Barry’s class (the one who called me hot last week.) Well, I got it again this week, but from a DIFFERENT kid in that class! As I was showing him to his seat, I heard him say, “You’re the hot one.” I ignored it and rolled my eyes. Later, he said, “You’re hot,” and then later he said, “You’re a hot woman!!” At that point, I said, “You need to stop saying those things to me.” If it happens again I’ll give him a disrespect spiel and stuff, but… he seemed to stop after me just saying what I did. My dad said he’s just parroting what he hears at home. Where else would he get that? He and Barry must spend time together.

JA had three 4th grade classes today (The boy who fell off the slide is back in school, feels fine, and remembers everything about falling. So glad he’s okay!!) and then we had Break, Prep, Lunch, and another Break. I spent most of that time being nervous about my afternoon with the 3rd graders. JA bought three loaves of delicious cardaman bread and gave one to me. I ate half of it and then it fell out of my bag on the way home and I lost it. Sad story.

Afternoon ECDD– the class with Daisy– went a lot better than last week. Daisy told me she wasn’t feeling well, though, so if she really didn’t feel well, maybe she’ll be back to normal next week. She was a little defiant, but JA basically built her lesson around beating Daisy at the defiance game, which worked wonders. That woman is amazing.

My 3rd grade lesson was a flop the first time around. A combination between a choppy plan and a Title II class made it fall on its face. In the five minute break between classes, JA gave me a couple of pointers, and between her suggestions and a different group of kids, it felt SO much better. The first time, though, I just was never sure what was next because the lesson just didn’t flow smoothly. But how is a teacher supposed to know those things until he/she tries it? None of my friends have the time to come over to my apartment and play school with me so I can try each one out. I don’t have that kind of time, for that matter. So… Here comes a career of trial and error. But like I mentioned a few days ago, we’re lucky because we have a job where we can make modifications and try it again. The lesson got better each time I did it today and I have to do it twice more tomorrow.

I have to finish all of my lesson plans for next week tonight and I have to really get a hold of what I’m doing for my new 3rd grade lesson tomorrow. On the plate for tomorrow is: One more kindergarten class, two third grades with the lesson I did today, and three third grades with a new lesson. I really hope I still get my seven hours of sleep tonight… I’m gonna need it.

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Today went really well on my part, but I’m super nervous for tomorrow. Tomorrow I start 3rd grade!!

We started out today with ECDD– the sweet class. There’s a 2 1/2 year old boy in there who gives the best hugs. Such a sweetheart. JA had me sit with a girl today, Allison, because apparently she likes to wander around and stuff. She was just fine today, but what I noticed was that it took her a really long time to process things. For example, we sang “Peeling My Banana” and she just sat and smiled. Then when we were singing the next song, “Brush Your Teeth,” she picked up on the movements to “Peeling My Banana.” I was fascinated. She was all smiles and having a great time. It’s really cute, but for her sake, I hope her processing speed picks up.

Kindergarten was all mine today. I did the same lesson as yesterday, which went really well, and then I added the hide-and-seek game with the stuffed dog. I’m so pleased with how that went. I picked two students at a time– one to hide the dog and one to find the dog. No one complained about not getting a turn to do both, and no one peeked while the dog was being hidden. So pleased!!! JA gave me some notes after the lesson:

• * I have a great way with kids. I’m very calm and they respond to me very well.
• * If kids aren’t participating, I need to say something to them. Even if it’s just getting them to stand up with us and not do everything we do. I can’t let them get away with just sitting.
• * I should teach them how to sing “Oh, Where Has My Little Dog Gone?” before we play the game so they can sing along during the game.
• * I should give examples of hiding places since they all hid the dog in the same general area.

A girl named Addie in the class was screaming for her daddy on the first day and was inconsolable. Screaming and wailing, and wouldn’t do anything. Her dad works in the school, which I think probably makes it harder for her. Anyway, the screaming and crying stopped today, but I did hear her say, “I miss my daddy,” once. I just went on and she didn’t say another word. Well, then at the end of class, after playing the game with the dog, she pouted to me, “I miss my puppy…” I just thought, Oh goodness, she’s going to come up with something/someone she misses no matter what we do. Next week we’re doing Hey Diddle Diddle… I wonder if she’ll miss her cow.

The rest of the day was JA’s. Tuesdays are going to be really nice. 4 classes, Break, one class, Prep, Lunch, two classes, Break, two classes, The End! It’s nice and broken up and gives us lots of time to get ready for whatever is next. JA did some movement with the 5th graders, which went really well for the first two classes and I thought was disastrous for the third class, but she wasn’t nearly as irritated as I was. That’s the first time I’ve noticed her having a higher tolerance for misbehavior than me.

2nd grade did a lesson on High and Low. That gave me some ideas for my Upward/Downward lesson that I’m doing with the 3rd graders next week. Little kid moment of the day came from one of the 2nd graders. JA was telling them the different parts of a note– the head and the stem– and a girl (who had been telling pointless stories all through class) raised her hand and said, “I have a head on my wall at home.” Ummmmmmmm… Hmm.

Anyway, tomorrow’s my first day of teaching 3rd grade and I’m doing a lesson on strong beat, beat, and melodic rhythm using “You’re A Grand Old Flag.” I need to study my lesson plan tonight and make sure I know what I’m doing.  Nervous about that… I start out the day with kindergarten, though, and then have all day to think about my 3rd grade lesson. Not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Oh, and in the middle there I get to see Daisy, the defiant preschooler. I’m actually kind of excited to see what kinds of trouble she causes. That’s probably bad.

Anyway, I have an hour to work on lesson plans. I won’t have much time tomorrow night and I need to have them all done for next week by Thursday. Work, work, work!

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I started my first week of teaching today with two kindergarten classes. I was pretty nervous last night and this morning! Maybe more excited than nervous, though…

First of all, I got to school about twenty minutes later than usual this morning because Erika’s getting to school at 7am now, which is way too early for me. So… yay for sleeping a little bit later, but boo for wasting money on gas and killing the environment.

We started with two kindergarten classes this morning. Since there wasn’t school last Monday, it was today’s kindergartners’ first day of music, so JA had to go over rules with them first, which took about ten minutes. The other twenty minutes of each class were mine, though! Here’s what I did…

The concept of the lesson was fast and slow. I started out with a little rhythmy song like thing that goes, “Clap clap clap your hands as slowly as you can. Clap clap clap your hands as fast as you can!” and then goes on with other things like “pound your fists” and “wiggle your fingers.” I was amazed at how fun something so simple could seem to them. I continued by playing the first verse of “Hush, Little Baby” on the piano and asking them if it was fast or slow. They said slow and I asked them to sway back and forth as I sang the rest of the song. I continued with three more examples of fast and slow songs. I used an iPod playlist for recordings so I wouldn’t have to monkey with CDs, which was an excellent plan. Gold star for me! Anyway, here’s the cool part of the lesson. There are two recordings of “Oh, Where Has My Little Dog Gone?” on the curriculum CD– one slow and one fast. I introduced the class to a little white stuffed dog of mine and told them this story.

“Fluffy likes to hide. He hides under the bed, in closets, under chairs, under the piano bench… He just loves to hide! Well one day, he was hiding and I just couldn’t find him. Since he hides all of the time, I wasn’t too worried, so I was walking around the house calling, ‘Fluffy… Fluffy!’ (Here I walk around the classroom looking underneath tables and such.) Now, I have a song that I like to sing when I’m looking for Fluffy. It’s a slow song, so I’d like you to sway with me as it plays. (I play the song and have the students sway back and forth with their hands to their foreheads, looking for Fluffy as they sway.) Well, even after I sang, I still couldn’t find Fluffy. I started running around the house yelling, “Fluffy! Fluffy!” (I look under a student’s chair and they laugh.) I try patting my legs to get him to come and sing the song a little bit faster. Try that with me! (I play the faster version and we pat our legs to the beat.) Well, I found Fluffy. You know where he was? He was sleeping on the couch the whole time.”

It went over fairly well. I was planning the swaying and patting, but didn’t plan the searching while swaying or patting as if calling a dog. I just sort of got to those parts and realized that they fit. Tomorrow, I’ll have more time since we won’t have to do rules with the kindergartners, so I’m going to have them play a sort of hide-and-seek game with the stuffed dog. I’m nervous about that, but I think they’ll have fun with it. I just have about a million ideas in my head of how I could go about it and need to decide on one.

The rest of the day was JA’s. My favorite kid quote of the day came from a first grader. JA had a candle, a drum, and a triangle drawn on the board. The triangle had a hanger at the top and a stick next to it, so it was sort of hard to tell what it was. Most of the students got it right, but one said, “I couldn’t tell that was a triangle. I thought it was a retro-nome!” Aww, how funny!

The big event of the day, though, was that a fourth grader fell off the top of a slide, landed on his head, and was unconscious for about ten minutes. Yeek. The ambulance was called and took him away. Mr. Flatt called a staff meeting at the end of the day to keep us updated; apparently the student is doing fine, but at that point they weren’t sure how severe of a concussion he had and whether or not he’d be staying at the hospital overnight. His little sister was in one of my afternoon classes and was taken out by the assistant principal and the nurse. I was so afraid they were going to tell her bad news, but they were just telling her he was going to be okay. The teachers were all freaking out about how inconvenient everything was in that the aides didn’t know where the emergency kit was and the phones didn’t work, and those are big deals, but the ambulance was called, everything was handled well, and everything turned out fine.

I need to stop blogging and get some lesson plans done before bedtime! Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines!!!

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I GET TO SLEEP IN TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay. Now that I got that out of the way… Today was another fairly uneventful day in Studentteachingville.

The day began with ECDD. Adorable little kids and no problems. Oh, how they make me miss my nephew. We don’t usually start Fridays with ECDD, but they switched the schedule a bit since it’s the first week. Otherwise, they would have had Music as their first thing on the first day of school. That probably would have been a disaster.

3rd Grade was after that, which is mine. JA sang some songs with them and then I taught them the musical crossword. I did better with it today than I did yesterday. I learned exactly what I needed to say in order for them to understand the instructions. Talk about step by step! “Circle the words down and across. Find the clue for #1 under the down column. Now find the little number one in the puzzle. Write the name for the symbol in the clue for #1 starting at the little #1 with one letter in each square going down.” Could you make that in any simpler terms?

The 5th graders sang a 7-verse version of “Yankee Doodle” and answered JA’s questions about the Revolutionary War with ease. I’m glad she wasn’t asking me. I know absolutely nothing about social studies. Nothing. The 5th graders are smarter than me. Anyway, somehow JA had ten 5th graders at a time playing drums and cymbals without it turning into mass chaos. Small problems with some of them, but really fairly organized. I was impressed.

We had a break and another 5th grade and another 3rd grade and then lunch. As usual, the classes blur together. I was getting better with names, though. As long as they’re with the other kids in their class, I’m okay. But if I see a kid from one class with a kid from another class in the hall, I’m stuck. I might be able to get most of my student’s names when they’re in the music room by the end of my six weeks, though.

The afternoon was full of 2nd graders. The concept of the day was echo. More instructions in simple terms. JA taught them how to follow the words in a piece of music by counting the treble clefs and finding the words by each treble clef. Even having them go from pg. 3 to pg. 256 was difficult. We had to help them find the right page numbers. That was probably two minutes of the lesson right there, so with the younger kids, things take longer than one might expect.

Cute little kid moment of the day: Starting in 2nd grade, the traditional Happy Birthday Song no longer exists and it is replaced with the song “Calypso Birthday Party,” in which the birthday boy or girl plays a big bongo and chooses five friends to play little bongos along with him or her. It was Neal’s birthday today, so we were going to do Calypso Birthday right away. JA told him to pick five friends and he said, “I’ll pick the people who are sitting straight and looking at and listening to the teacher.” The kids started straightening up and doing the quiet signal, showing off for Neal, and we waited for him to pick. Then, in a very newscaster-like voice, he said, “Mrs. O.” I was wondering if he wanted her to pick for him, but apparently she read his mind. She said, “Okay, we’ll do the birthday song at the end.” He nodded and kept close watch on all of his classmates through the whole class. Once, I even saw him glare at another kid and motion to him to turn around and pay attention. I just cracked up. I don’t know how JA kept it together. Anyway, at the end of class, he picked his five drummers and they were all proud. One student who apparently usually misbehaves was wonderful, and when JA commended him for that, he said, “Well I wanted to play the drums!” I hereby declare every day to be Neal’s birthday.

We’ve got all of our plans ready for next week. Well… sort of. I feel like I need to practice my lessons and time them and stuff.  I feel like I could plan them down to the very last detail and still not be prepared, because I have no idea how the students will react to anything I do. Some things might be too hard, some might be too easy… I have no idea. I start teaching kindergarten on Monday, and I’ll be doing a mini-lesson on fast and slow. With the rest of the kindergarten classes for the week, I’m adding a game to that lesson. Sort of a hide-and-seek game to go along with “Oh, Where Has My Little Dog Gone?” in which I’ll hide a stuffed dog and have kids look for it while the song is playing. I’ll have no idea how that will go over until I try it with them. Then on Wednesday, I start with 3rd grade with a lesson on beat using “You’re A Grand Old Flag.” And then on Thursday, a lesson on a George Cohan medley I found in Music Express magazine. So… more on those next week, but I’ll be thinking about them all weekend.

I’m going to try to relax for the rest of the night and put school aside. I’ll work on more school things tomorrow. But for now, it’s all zipped up in my bag and I won’t think about it any more! (That won’t happen, but it’s nice to dream.)

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9:50. By 10:00, I’d like to print off a lesson plan, fill out some paperwork, make a lunch, get ready for bed, get my things ready for the morning, and decide what I’m wearing tomorrow. Not happening. Shoot.

Today was fairly uneventful… at least compared to yesterday. We started out with a kindergarten class, in which I learned that Yooper accents can belong to five year olds as well as adults. JA was telling students where to sit, and they usually timidly walk to their seat, but when she called Yooper Boy’s name, he yelled, “Ya, dat’s me right here!” Ohhh my goodness. He cracked me up the rest of class. What’s even better is that he’s a talker. Seeing the little kids in the kindergarten and ECDD (Early Childhood Developmentally Delayed) classes makes me really miss my nephew. I wish I could watch him grow up, but what’s sad is I’ll probably get to know my students in six weeks better than I know Bo.

We had five 3rd grade classes in a row after that, which was interesting because it was the first day for two of the classes and the second day for three of them. So I got to do the rules spiel again with two of the classes, which was fine. Billie, a girl who played Brenton’s daughter in MacSith this summer and was in the drama camp I helped with a few weeks ago, was in the last 3rd grade class and REALLY wanted to tell the class that she knew me already, but JA never called on her and she was so good at not just blurting it out. She won the prize for the second funniest response from a kid all day (Yooper Boy won first prize.) When I asked about ways to be safe, when most kids said “Don’t punch,” and “Don’t walk on chairs,” Billie answered, “Never stand on the tables in the cafeteria and sing, because singing leads to dancing, and then dancing leads to falling off and getting hurt.” Oh, what a drama queen.

The Day 2 3rd graders got to work on a crossword that JA’s 18-month-old grandson accidentally ripped out of a book when we were doing our planning last week. The crossword was more difficult for them than we anticipated. I was supposed to do that lesson with them, but JA had to jump in several times to help modify. She made a good point today and said that we have the advantage of being able to improve our lesson throughout the week, whereas regular classroom teachers have to wait an entire year to try a lesson again and try to remember what improvements it needed. I guess we’re lucky in that aspect. Two of the boys during the crossword lesson got really giddy and told me I was pretty. I said thank you and walked away, and then one said I was hot. I’ve decided that next time that happens (since that’s the second time in two days) I need to say something. Maybe, “Would you say something like that to any of your other teachers?” HOPEFULLY they would say no, so then I could say, “I’m no different than any other teacher.” Maybe I won’t even have to cross that bridge, though.

We’ll normally have chorus on Thursdays after lunch, but that doesn’t start for a few weeks, so we had some extra prep time today. It went by super fast, though, and then we had three first grade classes. Nothing too exciting with them, either. It was their first day, so it was a rules day. If I thought hard, I might think of something worth writing, but I’m too tired to think hard.

I stayed after school for an hour and a half today. A half an hour planning with JA, a half an hour talking to AB (my supervising teacher for the second half) and the band teachers, and then a half an hour at the Superintendent’s office getting things straightened out for subbing. I was SO tired afterwords I told myself I’d be in bed NO LATER THAN 10, but… look. It’s 10:08 and that didn’t happen. I want to be in better shape tomorrow than I was today, though, so it’s time to do all of those things I mentioned at the beginning of this. Tomorrow’s Friday! Woooo!

Filed by emstrazz at 9:08 pm under Uncategorized
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I have to start with the beginning of the day so I don’t forget any of the adorable stories.

It was my first day carpooling with Erika, so I got to school 20 minutes before I would have been there otherwise. That was good, because I got some planning done. Yay for less I have to do at home!

We started out the day with two kindergarten classes. At the end of the first class, I went over to the door to help the students line up and one little boy came up to me and gave me a great big hug. We were trying to enforce the idea of getting and staying in line, so I was ready to shoo him back into line and two other kids came up and gave me hugs, so I had three kindergartners hanging off of me. Two let go, but the first one was there. I asked, “What’s your name?” He replied, “Barry.” I said, “Barry, you need to stand in line.” He stood back in line, looked at me, and said, “You’re hot.” So matter-of-fact, too! I decided it was a good time to check out the rest of the line and make sure everyone was behaving. Sheesh!

So the next kindergarten class came along, and I was singing along with JA and a boy in the middle row says to me, “You have a nice voice.” I said thank you and JA proceeded to tell the class that some of them may recognize me from Little Red Walking Hood last year and that I was Little Red. That same little boy dropped his jaw and pointed at me, starstruck, and wouldn’t do anything but that for the rest of the class. I am a celebrity in one little kindergartner’s mind.

Next, we had three fourth grade classes in a row and they all blur together to me right now. I just sat and listened all three times. No participation for me. JA went over rules with them and told them about the new and exciting things they get to do as 4th graders– recorders and chorus. Cool stuff. One student mentioned that I don’t look as short as I did when I was Little Red. I blame that on the 3″ heels I was wearing today. She and JA chalked it up to the fact that they were watching me from bleachers when I was Little Red. Someone else said I grew over the summer. Anyway, I was handing out papers later and one of the boys said, “Thanks Little Red. Or… Big Red, now, I guess.”

We had an hour and a half for a break, prep, and lunch, in which I worked on rosters and writing out our schedule. Fun teacher things, I suppose. Lunchtime is getting better. Less union talk and more teacher talk. That’s a good thing.

After lunch, we had our first preschool group. JA was nervous about that. I wasn’t teaching it, so I guess I didn’t care. But goodness gracious, were they a handful! Twelve special ed 3, 4, and 5 year olds in one room together. They were all squirmy, but one student in particular… oh dear. Daisy is a cute little blond girl, and at first I figured her only problem was her speech. For example, monkey=mutsy and book=boots. But she was curled up in her chair and wouldn’t participate, and JA decided it was the first day, so she didn’t need to fight with her too much. But then Daisy started getting out of her chair and blurting out and being a distraction. So JA would tell her what she needed to do and Daisy would shout, “No!” Daisy separated herself from the rest of the class and sat at the end of the front row, which was fine… until we were doing “Five Little Monkeys.” Well, by the time there were three little monkeys on the bed, Daisy was sick of that song and yelled, “That’s enough!” JA told her she can’t talk to her that way. Daisy got out of her chair and started running around the room. JA chased her. Meanwhile, little mini-football-player Mason decided he’d help out the teacher and tackle Daisy to the ground. So Daisy and Mason are rolling on the ground fighting, and JA breaks them up. Daisy was send out of the room with an aide for a little while. When she came back in, we had her sit on my lap while we sang “Brush Your Teeth.” I sang to Daisy and did the movements with her and she was giggling and cuddling up to me and she was the sweetest little girl there ever was. When we walked them back to class, their teacher told us that group was the easy one. On Friday we get her other group of kids, and apparently they’re worse. Eek!

The rest of the day was full of third grade, and they’re pretty much my babies. They’re the first ones I’m starting with next week, so I got to do the rules spiel with them. I did things a little bit differently than JA, but I tried to be pretty consistent with everything she had been saying to the other classes. I’m much more tolerant of noise than she is. A few times she stepped in and asked them to stop blurting and interrupting, and I never noticed that those things were happening. So we’re trying to decide if that’s something that I need to work on or just something that isn’t a problem for me. It seemed to take me longer to get through things than it took her, but part of that could have just been having to look at the seating chart whenever I called on someone. I’m so glad she let me get up there, though, because listening to her do the rules with every class was making me antsy. The third graders seem like a good group of kids, and I’m excited to start really working with them next week.

Phew. I’m more exhausted from writing about my day than I was from experiencing it. I stayed after school for over an hour waiting for Erika, which is fine because I got some planning done. And then I spent four hours at my grandma’s tonight doing nothing but lesson plans. So hopefully I’ll be able to stay ahead of the game enough without completely losing all of my personal life. I feel good about today, though, start to finish. Going to bed later than I would have liked to, but that’s okay!

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And thus begins a month and a half of children’s songs constantly running through my head.

School started today. I’m exhausted and I didn’t even do anything, but I’m blaming that on the fact that I didn’t do anything. We had nine classes today– one kindergarten, three 5th grades, and four 2nd grades– and each class got the same spiel. What does it mean to be responsible? What does it mean to be safe? How can we consider others’ feelings? Some of my favorite answers…

• “My grandma broke her collarbone.”
• “You shouldn’t climb on the urinals and try jumping into the sink.”
• “Be nice.”
• “I have to go to the bathroom.”

The kindergartners wanted to call me “Mrs. Snake” because JA said they could call me Miss S and they got excited because snake starts with an S. JA said, “We’ll call her Miss S because she’s not a snake.” Oh my goodness, this job is amusing already. We had one kindergartner wail about missing her mommy and daddy through the whole class. We couldn’t get her to calm down, and I felt so bad for her because I remember feeling like that way too clearly.

I recognized almost all of the fifth graders because I volunteered with last year’s fourth graders often. I’m so glad I did that, too. I already have part of a relationship built with them, and it felt great to hear one of them say, “Are you the lady from last year?” After a whole summer and a drastic haircut, they still recognize me! That’s pretty cool if you ask me.

A lot of the second graders remembered seeing me in the opera last year, which is super cute. They’re all excited that Little Red Walking Hood is one of their teachers.

Seeing JA interact with the kids all day made me a little nervous. She’s got 27 years of this under her belt, and although I feel very comfortable in front of a classroom, I know that in a matter of six weeks, I’ll never compare to how amazing she is! She changes her voice inflections for each grade level because she knows how each level responds to different things– even something as small as a different tone of voice. She talks more quietly and high pitched with younger children, and more adult-to-adult with the fifth graders. She has a way of even just telling new kids what to call her that I would never dream of. Who thought telling someone your name could be more exciting than, “You can call me Miss S.”? She makes it exciting. I’m so lucky to have her as my role model, but it is slightly intimidating right now!

On a good note, I showed her my first lesson plan that I wrote up and she was impressed. I put the approximate amount of time that each activity would take on there because I wanted to make sure I had enough material, and she thought that was wondrous. I’m also excited because she has all of the materials I’ll need. I’ll be doing that lesson on the 16th. That’s next Wednesday. It took me such a long time to come up with that, and it’s a simple lesson… I’m going to be keeping myself busy with planning!

So, tomorrow’s the same thing, but with different students. I think JA might let me talk a little bit tomorrow. Today, I just listened to her and made goofy facial expressions to go along with what she was saying. But… I’ve got to start somewhere.

Oh, and no more carpooling with Kurt. Starting tomorrow, he has to be there an hour earlier than I do. Shoot. It was fun for the four days that it lasted.

Goals for tonight:

• Type up 3rd Grade Lesson Plan #2.
• Brainstorm Kindergarten Lesson Plan #1.
• Print a student teaching calendar for JA.
• Personalize my lunch bag since another teacher has the same one.

Time to get to work!

Filed by emstrazz at 5:27 pm under Uncategorized
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