Weekly Blog 1

Highlight

I think for me the highlight of the week was (and I know this is a cheesy teacher answer) was working one on one with students. They were doing a lot of group work and working on reading strategies, so I got to interact a lot with students and ask/answer questions. I got to learn more about some of my students, and some of them surprise you when they really ask deep critical questions or have awesome work skills. I feel like I was helping students because instead of giving them the answers, I made it a point to ask questions until they could come up with the answer themselves. Some students were aggravated and just want you to tell them what to do, but most students really just want to be given the tools to do things on their own.

Something that happened

I think the one thing that made me think differently was my cooperating teachers approach to assessment this week. She is giving the students short stories and worksheets to prepare them for the MSP, and she has done the same type of exercise for almost two weeks now. She is giving it to them until she sees “hundreds across the board.” I am unsure about the approach, because on the one hand I think it is awesome to have high expectations and push your students to try hard and succeed. On the other hand, I don’t know if it is beneficial to just repeat an exercise until students become perfect. I had one student today get a 90% and he said he was “mad at himself” for doing “so bad on the test.” I think there needs to be a balance between high expectations and teaching students that they are a number. I’m not trying to be critical, but I might focus on improvement rather than perfection.

One practice or approach to use

One thing that was really awesome I observed was professional cooperation. There was a science teacher who observed the English classroom I am in for a period. She was trying to learn about how to teach reading strategies to adjust her teaching for the common core state standards. I thought that it was really cool to see the teachers at my school working together and trying to make sure all of the teachers are working together to help the students.

Conflicts

Substitute teachers

So I had my first interaction with a substitute this week; it did not go well. She didn’t realize I was going to be there and subtly asked me to leave. And I got the impression she was subbing because she’d gotten a degree at some point, but clearly did not really care about the students. I don’t want to be negative, but it made me think about how I would manage substitutes in the future, or how I would manage being a substitute in the future. It was frustrating because I lost my four hour day, and now I have to figure out how to make it up.

Testing overkill

I know students have to take the MSP, and my school has really abysmal test scores usually. But we’ve spent two weeks doing repetitive busywork to “prepare” students. I feel like there is a better way, hopefully.