Week 6

Monday:

            One thing I must say is that I absolutely love coming to school every morning. Every time I come here, I just feel like I can forget about anything else going on and just focus on being with my students. So I must say that I am very thankful for this placement, my cooperating teacher, and my students after today. They make me smile every day I go in; even when they are being chatty!

            Today we had presentations for Social Studies about their dream jobs. A few of them even dressed up for it!  They went well, obviously they were very short presentations; only one paragraph. If I were to do something like this again, I think I would try and get more involved with it. I felt like I didn’t prepare enough for this unit on careers, only because there was so much I could have done with it! However, I am very happy with how it turned out. The students even started their classroom jobs that they applied for; everyone seemed very happy with the job they were given. =)

One thing I learned today, no matter how much I think I know about the students, they never cease to surprise me. Today I worked with one-on-one with a student while doing reading centers. He always loves reading Mr. Brown Can Moo to me; we still have yet to finish the book! This particular student has an IEP, and they are considering moving him to the full time special education program. Despite some of these setbacks, he is a very bright student. (This was all context just so you can understand the type of student he is. =)

Anyways, today while reading with him we came across one line, “very soft, very high”. All of the sudden he stopped reading and told me “I don’t like this page.” I was really confused as to why, the picture wasn’t scary and I had no idea what he was talking about. So I asked him to explain, and basically his explanation was along the lines of high means it gets smoky and my mom and auntie are sometimes in the back room screaming. My heart instantly dropped when I heard this, and he continued talking a little bit about the situation. Sometimes his stories are hard to follow, but the beginning of this one was made very clear. I feel like stuff like this should be reported; no child should be experiencing anything like this, especially so young! The fact that he was so upset by that one word makes me so nervous for him. I love each and every one of my students, and when I hate to hear that this is going on at home.

Tuesday:

            Special surprise today was a shortened day! Andrea and I both had no idea coming into school that it was going to be a SIP (School Improvement Plan) day. I didn’t get to do much teaching because of this, and the day went by very quickly! I’m very happy I was able to experience this day with all of the other teachers. Basically what these days consist of is the teachers staying late to try and find ways to improve the school by working and discussing together or in groups.

            The goal for today was to find a mission statement for the school. The principal is leaving after this year, and she wants the teachers to give their input on what they believe the mission of the school actually is. I thought this was a little odd that they were trying to figure out a mission statement towards the middle of a school year so I asked Andrea. It turned out that they had already done this earlier in the year, so a lot of them seemed a little annoyed that this was happening again. I don’t want to get too detailed because I understand that this is online for anyone to see. So, all I will say is that the thought behind finding a school mission statement is very good! However, it’s my understanding after today that usually principals help create mission statements. If they are getting a new principal next year, I’m not completely clear on what the point of this activity was.

            However, all of this talk about mission statements did get me thinking! This could be a very good way for me to see which school or districts I would want to work in by looking at their mission statements. The purpose of these is to summarize what the goal is that the teachers and school are trying to achieve. I really hope to be part of a school that is concerned about creating lifelong learners, teaching 21^st century skills, and empowering both the students and the teachers. Along with this, perhaps I should make a mission statement for my own classroom! I think that would be a good idea, just to keep the end goal in mind throughout the year. =)

Wednesday:

            Today I took some time reflecting on what I can improve on to help ease the stress that I’ve been feeling lately. Every single day, I feel like I come home absolutely exhausted; but I continue working on either Trinity lesson plans or plans for school. I think I may have found a solution if I have the responsibility to go through with it! I really believe it would be beneficial to begin using my weekends to start planning the entire week ahead of time. This way when I get home throughout the week, I don’t have to worry about what I need to make for the next day because it will be finished already! This is an optimistic thought, but I think it might be a good one!

            The main reason I thought of this is because I always see how the other second grade teachers are planning. Obviously they don’t have as much work to do because they have taught a lot of these lessons for the past five years; but they always plan for the week ahead! I never see them trying to figure out what is going on tomorrow because they already know what they’re going to be doing.

            Moving on from planning, I worked one-on-one with a student again today. He struggles a lot with reading, and today I learned something that I’m not quite sure how to understand. While reading a story, this student will look around the room to try and match the word in the book to a poster or song on the wall. He’s very good at recognizing words, but he still is not sure of what the word is! I was discussing this with Andrea, and she isn’t even sure what this means exactly. I suppose it’s good that he recognizes the words, but that doesn’t mean he’s improving reading. It’s a very strange coping mechanism that I have never even heard of! Hopefully we will be able to figure more out as time goes on.

Thursday:

            Wow! I can’t believe how much I am starting to dislike party days! I mean, don’t get me wrong; it’s very fun to celebrate with them. However, party days are so much more stress and work than a normal school day. It was frustrating because the morning, when we were supposed to still have a normal school day, all of the students were already acting wild and excited. If someone can easily manage a children’s party, then their classroom management skills should be recorded in a book!

            This morning while teaching my social studies lesson, the kids were acting so much more hyper and inattentive than usual. I felt like I was just doing an awful job, but Andrea kept reassuring me that it wasn’t me, it was just the holiday. Although it was a lot of stress, we had a lot of fun! The kids had an ice cream bar, which I was very excited when I was able to eat one too!

            One aspect of the holiday that is very cute are all of the presents the students brought in for us. A student actually told me that she bought her gift for us with her own money! She was so excited to be able to give us something that she earned herself. We actually had a very strange incident happen with a bag of treats brought in by a student’s grandparent. They made very nice bags for everyone in the class, but they smelled like skunk! Andrea wasn’t sure what to do and whether or not she should send them home. She ended up sending them, but that would be a difficult decision to make. The grandparents might be offended if they found out, and other parents might be angry that you are sending a smelly bag home. Hopefully no one gets too upset!

Friday:

            I’m so thankful the week is over! Not that I’m not enjoying myself, but it’s just been such a long and busy week. So far, I’m starting to get a little bit bored with not teaching the whole day. Now I’m starting to get used to teaching the same things; so I am very excited and nervous to start teaching math next week! It will definitely be a challenging week because we are starting double-digit subtraction with regrouping. Andrea said they are going to struggle through this a lot.

            Hopefully I will be able to prepare myself a lot for this unit coming up. It really makes it difficult to teach concepts and strategies when some of the students don’t even know their basic math facts yet. I know you can’t keep everyone behind on account of four people; however, I really wish it were easier to differentiate instruction. With math, it’s very difficult because we only have them for half hour. If more time was devoted to math, perhaps we could take more time with the students who need that extra attention.

            This weekend I am really looking forward to sitting down and trying to figure out a new way to teach this. I also need to hear about what the best strategies are for going about teaching double-digit subtraction with regrouping. Andrea and the other second grade teachers are great resources for this. However, I am starting to learn how to take their advice and combine it or change it into a way that I can easily adapt it. This week has been very stressful, but I’m really starting to feel more like a real teacher! =)