The second week I was in the classroom the teacher was out in the afternoon and a substitute came in. I was doing most of the work but the substitute had to be there. There is one student who has EBD. He can be a very sweet child and Ms. Morris is wonderful with him. This is evidenced by the fact that he has not had an outburst since I have been there. She merely says "OK -------, I hear you. Now you need to go do what I asked you to do." She made it look so easy. It didn't seem to work for me on that Friday. He was having trouble with division and I was trying to explain it to him. He kept saying, "NO, that isn't how Mrs. Morris told me to do it." I kept trying to explain it to him and he kept getting louder and louder. The day ended with him having a meltdown and crying in the hallway. I tried and tried to figure out what I had done wrong. One thing I noted was that as he was getting more and more agitated...so was I. I had a hard time keeping a calm tone. I didn't yell, but my voice and body language were not conveying a sense of calm. Other than that, I couldn't figure out how this had happened.
Fast forward a week, and I'm teaching a lesson on science. All the students are sitting in their assigned spot on the carpet, except -----. I asked him to go to his spot and he said "There isn't enough room for me over there. I want to stay here." I again repeated the request and he started to say the same thing. I calmly asked him if he was being respectful and told him he needed to go to his spot. Amazingly, he did! Wow, how did that happen? No crying, screaming, or timeout in the hallway. He just got up, with a little huff, and went to his spot. What was the difference? Well I did keep a calm tone this time and that may have helped but, the main thing that changed was our relationship. I have been trying to talk to him and develop a relationship with him and I have noticed his attitude has changed toward me. Don't get me wrong, he still gets upset and doesn't always behave up to expectations but now I often get hugs in the morning and stories of his weekend. Relationship is everything!
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
My first official lesson
Well today I finally did my first lesson. It was just a 25 minute word work lesson, but it was more than enough for me. Everything went ok but I learned that saying the lesson in the shower before school is totally different than saying it in front of 30 10 year olds. My teacher told me that I need to slow down and let them come up with the answers. I also caught myself not giving students enough think time. That will be my goal for tomorrow.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Harder than it looks
I have been observing in my class for two weeks now (minus the two snow days) and it has been overwhelming, exciting, tiring, challenging, fun, heartwarming and scary. I am very fortunate to have an awesome teacher who does a great job of classroom management and is constantly assessing the students and herself to improve the job she is doing and make sure that the students are mastering the concepts she is teaching them.
The mornings start with the lights dimmed and soft classical music playing in the background. On the PowerPoint she lists the morning routine and students file in quietly and start on their morning tasks. She says it is important to set the right tone from the beginning.
Mrs. Morris has procedures in place and students know those procedures. After Christmas break she decided that transitions were taking too long so she had a class discussion to see how this could be improved. Together the class determined that a reasonable transition time from one subject to the next and from carpet time to desk time was less than one minute and 30 seconds. Next they set a goal of achieving a 1 minute and 30 second QUIET transition time at least 20 times in four days. Friday was a day when students were going to swap books (this was planned for the Friday before Christmas break but was snowed out). Together the class decided that their reward for achieving their goal would be the opportunity to bring a soda from home to drink during the book swap. The result was happy students that Friday and much better transition times that led to more learning time. This was a great example of showing the students that she is “the final authority while allowing them to feel that the classroom belongs to them as does the responsibility for their learning (Mack-Kirschner, pg. 10).”
After almost two weeks of seeing Mrs. Morris make it look easy I start thinking I have a grasp on this classroom management stuff, after all I’ve read six chapters of the Love and Logic book as well as Harry Wong’s The First Days of School. How hard could it be? Well I found out today. The regular classroom teacher was out in the afternoon and it was just me and the substitute. I noticed a low hum of chatter in the class that wasn’t there before and suddenly our transitions were louder and longer than I had ever seen them in my whole two weeks. Next came the meltdown of “Bob” the student with emotional and behavioral issues who decided that I did not know how to do long division and that was not how Mrs. Morris had taught him. I was wrong and he wasn’t going to listen to me. My mind was reeling with all the information I had read but at the time I couldn’t grasp just the best way to address the issue. Looking back now I could have empathized with him while still giving him the consequences (Love and Logic, pg. 37) but at the time I was just trying not to show the anger that was welling up inside of me. All parties survived the episode but I now see some of the mistakes that I made. I guess that is what student teaching is all about.
The mornings start with the lights dimmed and soft classical music playing in the background. On the PowerPoint she lists the morning routine and students file in quietly and start on their morning tasks. She says it is important to set the right tone from the beginning.
Mrs. Morris has procedures in place and students know those procedures. After Christmas break she decided that transitions were taking too long so she had a class discussion to see how this could be improved. Together the class determined that a reasonable transition time from one subject to the next and from carpet time to desk time was less than one minute and 30 seconds. Next they set a goal of achieving a 1 minute and 30 second QUIET transition time at least 20 times in four days. Friday was a day when students were going to swap books (this was planned for the Friday before Christmas break but was snowed out). Together the class decided that their reward for achieving their goal would be the opportunity to bring a soda from home to drink during the book swap. The result was happy students that Friday and much better transition times that led to more learning time. This was a great example of showing the students that she is “the final authority while allowing them to feel that the classroom belongs to them as does the responsibility for their learning (Mack-Kirschner, pg. 10).”
After almost two weeks of seeing Mrs. Morris make it look easy I start thinking I have a grasp on this classroom management stuff, after all I’ve read six chapters of the Love and Logic book as well as Harry Wong’s The First Days of School. How hard could it be? Well I found out today. The regular classroom teacher was out in the afternoon and it was just me and the substitute. I noticed a low hum of chatter in the class that wasn’t there before and suddenly our transitions were louder and longer than I had ever seen them in my whole two weeks. Next came the meltdown of “Bob” the student with emotional and behavioral issues who decided that I did not know how to do long division and that was not how Mrs. Morris had taught him. I was wrong and he wasn’t going to listen to me. My mind was reeling with all the information I had read but at the time I couldn’t grasp just the best way to address the issue. Looking back now I could have empathized with him while still giving him the consequences (Love and Logic, pg. 37) but at the time I was just trying not to show the anger that was welling up inside of me. All parties survived the episode but I now see some of the mistakes that I made. I guess that is what student teaching is all about.
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