Wow, Almost there

Wow I can’t believe I only have a week in a half left of student teaching. It seems like yesterday that I was just starting to student teach and I was scared silly. One thing that I would say I am pretty good at now is reflecting. Reflecting helped me grow as a teacher and become better at teaching. Reflecting is always going to be part of helping me grow professionally because its forcing me to take a look at a lesson did or did not work. How I did overall for the week and what I can be improving on.

With every observation I had I improved dramatically. My supervisor was amazing. He had amazing ideas and suggestions but he also did amazing reminding me what we learned in our education classes to help improve my teaching. When my supervisor observed me and the observation when really bad he had me reflect first on what I thought was the problem and what I thought should be changed. I really struggled with classroom management and my supervisor gave me some great ideas to fix that. With this last observation he said he could see real improvement with my classroom management.

I have found that my knowledge of learning disabilities was invaluable, but I still have so much more to learn. I did find myself seeking out knowledge and opinions from other teachers and especially the special education teachers. They would give me pointers and also give me words of encouragement. I was sent links to activities that would help me teach a subject better and teachers also gave me the lesson plans they’ve used in the past that have worked. I plan to continue this practice when I get a job teaching. I found student teaching that the advise and collaboration of experienced teachers is invaluable.

As for my goals this week;

1. Treating every class like it’s a new and wonderful class is still working, stopping and praying before each class is a must and I will continue this practice.  
2. Co-teaching all this week will be interesting and that is going to take some praying as well.
3. I’m praying that my students will be ready for their final exams.
4. Healthy eating is on and off with the stress but still going well over all.  
5. God time is still a work in progress.
6. Focusing on the positive students has really helped keep my classroom environment positive. The students who were acting negative saw me thanking the students who were acting positive and now they are acting more positive.
7. My lesson in government to solely use technology is this week and hopefully it goes well.

8.      I’m in my last week of full time teaching and co-teaching with my co-operating teacher so I’m praying that goes well. Co-planning did not go as I thought it would.

9.      Lessons to use co-teaching have been put into place and I’m hoping that the students also take full advantage of having both teachers in the classroom.

10.  I’m hoping that my students transition well back to my cooperating teacher and I plan to help with that as much as possible. This is my new goal for the rest of my time student teaching.

Pray that this week goes well and that the transition goes smoothly,

Almost done, 

~Abby