Week 1

An Exciting Start

I am in an amazing second grade classroom at Howe Elementary in Beach Park, IL. This week has been filled with a great range of emotion. Every morning started out with nerves, every school day consisted of excitement, and every night was filled with exhaustion. I really can’t believe I’m in my last semester of college. Just this week has been so different than everything that I am used to.

Throughout the week Mrs. Gass, my cooperating teacher, the staff, and the students have made me feel very welcome. My class consists of about 20 students, one of which I have yet to meet. There is one student from Puerto Rico who is just now learning how to speak English. Mrs. Gass was explaining to me the different strategies she uses and how the student will go out of the classroom with an ELL teacher throughout the day(K3.5.). Since we had our student teaching seminar on Monday, I wasn’t able to start until Tuesday.

Tuesday: After my first day visiting, I noticed that they have a lot of sayings and chants that I will need to become familiar with. It seems that they are all very effective. Their entire morning routine has been practiced and rehearsed since the beginning of the year. I really like how Mrs. Gass covers so many different things in such a short amount of time.

Today one of the students had an incident where she was refusing to do any work. She was sitting at her table crying, and we found out it was because she didn’t have any markers while all of the other students were underlining with markers. Another student at her table gave her a marker; it was a simple solution to the problem. Based on what I saw today and what Mrs. Gass told me, she will become emotional randomly throughout the day. I don’t know that I would have handled the situation any different, because it was so easily fixed; but I will try to make myself aware of what she is doing throughout my semester.

Wednesday I was able to attend a staff meeting. I learned that this school has not had a lockdown drill for quite some time. During the meeting, they discussed the Sandy Hook situation and all of them seemed to be very concerned about the safety of their students. It was interesting to attend this meeting, but at the same time a relief. I was happy to see how informal the setting was and how comfortable everyone was with each other.

Thursday and Friday were very similar to each other. Nothing too exciting happened, but throughout the week I became much more familiar with the atmosphere of this school. So far I absolutely love it! It seems that the teachers are more than just colleagues; they are a great support for one another and are friends even outside of school. We have a very small lunchroom with circular tables fit for about four. Instead of separating and sitting at two tables, all six of us squeeze into one.

So far, I really feel that this school will be a great fit for me! Mrs. Gass is very willing to help me grow and is very willing to give me the freedom to change a few things. The students do not completely understand that I will be here for a long time, which keeps making me smile. Almost every day they ask if I’m coming back tomorrow, then when I say yes they get very excited and tell each other that “Miss Geer is coming back tomorrow”; hopefully it’ll get through next week. =) Although, I can’t say I dislike hearing them cheer every time they realize I’ll be back the next school day.

Classroom Confidential

I’m actually quite surprised with how much I really like this book. In this first chapter, Schmidt addresses different ways to create excited and involved learners. One of her methods of getting students more interested is to include all of the multiple intelligences in the classroom. I hope that I will be able to take this advice and, as a teacher, not penalize students when they solve something differently or learn in different ways. I hope to encourage my students to see their strengths and weaknesses, and keep building on what they already know, but to try their best to grow in areas where they can see they need improvement. Schmidt talks about a teacher named Lisa, and how she “creates a culture in which every student feels a vested interest in the well-being of their classmates, and knows how to help” (page, 13). I hope I will be able to create a classroom with this type of environment.

I really liked how Schmidt pointed out that hands-on activities that are simply that would do no good. “Full brain learning” can only happen when students are fully engaged in what they are participating in. For example, if you have students doing mindless tasks just to get them out of their seats, then that is a waste of time. They need to have a problem to solve, or a different way of becoming engaged in what is in front of them. She talks about how including numerous intelligences in hands-on activities will create a worth-while activity.