Prioritizing

My teaching experience in the past week has been comforting. I’m finally beginning to see how much I’ve learned and that I can be a great teacher, I just need to continue to work hard. Before this week I was worried I wasn’t good enough. I was worried that by trying to become a teacher I would just harm my future students. I was watching all these other amazing teachers and just praying I could be like them and was mad at myself for not being that good. This week it finally set in that If I work hard and always put my students best interest first then I will eventually become an amazing teacher. I had a classroom full of students tell me I was already a good teacher without any prompting so it’s starting to really dawn on me. I was right in following God’s path for me; teaching is what I was meant to do.

The first thing I want to address today is my students’ lack of prior knowledge in both my subjects. In psychology I expected a good lacking in my students prior knowledge but I did expect there to be a lot of prior knowledge for my students in Government. I can’t believe that after all the classes my students are required to take before Government that they wouldn’t know more than they actually do. Another area of concern I have is that my students have a lot of misconceptions about both my topics. All my students know about Psychology is what they see on TV and for Government they barely know more than that. I’ve found that not only am I trying to connect the lesson with what they see on TV or in real life but I have to correct the misconceptions they have learned from TV.

This week I taught a lesson in Government that used a lot of different ways to teach my students key ideas. I did this with a child’s story book and a graphic novel on the constitution. But I also had my students come up with examples from their experiences. In this lesson I was teaching the reasons for Government that are found in the Constitution. This was an important issue for my students to understand because many of them don’t really see a need for government. They consider any kind of law or law enforcement bad. I wanted them to really understand without government our lives would be chaos. In this lesson I read the children’s book to my students. I didn’t know exactly how they would respond to it because; I was reading a children’s book to them. They loved it and I think it is because the book used simple words and my students could understand it because they didn’t have to read it themselves. For a lot of my students English is their second language. The graphic novel chapter still had a lot of words in it but it had pictures to help my students understand what was going on.

In psychology I try different ways to incorporate real world experiences into the material and for this class it feels much easier. Now that I’m moving on to the brain and biology behind psychology its going to be harder to connect it to my students in the real world but easier to connect it to what my students are and have learned in science. For this chapter I’m constantly checking to see what my students already know and if they know something already I ask them and relate it back to their science classes.

As for my goals this week

1.      I am still working on learning my government kids names.

2.      My social life is kind important right now seeing as my friend is getting married in two weeks so all those pre-wedding activities are really picking up. I just have to make sure school is really still coming first. My students are too important to not come first. It’s all about prioritizing.

3.      Eating healthy flew out the window with pre-wedding activities but I’m working on it.

4.      My relationship with God is stronger than ever because there is no way I would get through this experience without his support constantly.

5.      Sanity (crossing fingers) is returning, even though life is staying busy.

6.      Being the best teacher I can be is not only developing better relationships with my students but also making sure they are respecting me as well.

7.      For the job hunt to begin I need to figure out where I want to go in life. But I’m working towards passing all my tests and fixing my resume.

8.      Communicating more effectively in front of my students is going well. It was suggested in a workshop I went to last week that I should be real with my students and so I’m trying that. It seems to be working well.

9.      Being consistent is a challenge for me right now because I want to find the best practices that work with my students. I am going to continue to work on this for the upcoming week.

10.  Another goal I want to work on is being better prepared to answer my student’s questions about the curriculum. My students are very interested in what they are learning but there are several questions they asked this week that I didn’t know the answer too. I want to try to learn to prepare for those questions. 

I'm being observed this week again so please pray that goes well, 

Abby

Information and Communication

If I had to describe this past week in one word it would be informative. This week not only did I get to know my students better but I also went to my first teachers’ in-service conference. At this conference teachers from the three district high schools presented on how they do best practices as teachers. I went to two and learned a lot about the Socratic method and motivating students. I also learned a lot about the different cultures in my classroom. My students learned a lot this past week as well, but if there is one thing my psychology students will take from our Friday class, its that Miss. Doesn’t like snakes.

I learned this week that communication with my students isn’t just verbal and it isn’t just in the classroom. Saying hi to my students in the hall way and using their names makes them feel like they aren’t just one in the crowd of students in a classroom. Another way I communicate with my students is to thank them by name for staying on task in my classroom. I’ve started to do this because it was suggested as one of the ways to get the students not working motivated to work. This along with marking their paper with a highlighter pen has been working extremely well in my government class. When I mark on my students paper with a highlighter pen it indicates to me that they were working with the time I gave to them when that paper gets handed in. That mark will go towards a participation grade. This new system I implemented about a two weeks ago has really been helping getting my students’ motivated to use their time wisely.

Now, I use non-verbal communication as much as I use verbal. This is especially true when my students need to stop talking and switch their focus back to me. The most effective way I have found to get my students to stop their own conversations and focus on me is to stop talking, sometimes turn off the lights, and wait until they refocus on me. Many of my students will do the quieting down for me and as my cooperating teacher says. The louder I get the louder my classroom gets and eventually I’m going to end up losing my voice and I will continue to have the problem. So I started simply just standing and waiting. It works pretty good. Another way I have been nonverbally communicating with my students is a smile when they walk in or as I’m circulating the classroom. I also go and simply stand next to my talkers or interrupters. They hate it but they get the message loud and clear.

My students in both my government and psychology classes have gotten many different opportunities to communicate with me and each other; verbally, non- verbally and written. Their notebooks are the main source for this communication. Most everything they share with me and the class they write in those notebooks. Once they write their answer to a question of the day or a question I ask them during class; I have several students share their answers with the class. Often times I have my students share with a partner as well. Both psychology and government have now had experience writing information down that they themselves have gone out and found. They have also experienced presenting that information to the class. They don’t like it much but they just need to practice.

One thing I do a lot as a teacher is listen. When I ask a question I am listening to how my students are relating the information to their lives. I also am listening and assessing how well my students understood a concept. I do a lot of listening when my students are in groups. Often times I’ve found myself solving little conflict issues my students have run into. The main way I’ve been listening this week is students who are talking to me before or after class about issues in their lives. I have been making it a point to talk to the students who are not themselves or are not participating the way they should and see what’s going on in their lives. This past week two of my students were gone for more than one day. They were both in the hospital. Effectively communicating with them involved being sympathetic but also gaining from them the best way to help them succeed now that they were back in my classroom. I also learned that my students are more accountable if they know I’m going to ask them how they are if their head is down or if they miss class. They don’t really like to lie to my face so I get much better behavior just by making sure I’m communicating with my students.

So far the last huge way I’ve been communicating with my students is feedback on handed in assignments and questions answered in class. The work I give my students to do is work that I can give them a lot of feedback on. Their assignments usually have red ink on it no matter if its excellent quality or poor quality. When they answer questions in class I pull out the parts of their answer that were right and I work with the students on finding all the right parts to that answer.

As for my goals this week:

1.      I know for sure I have my students names in psychology but now I really need to work on Government. 

2.      I have determined that my social life really isn't important in this phase of life, right now I need to focus on school and getting through this experience. I'm sure my friends will understand. 

3.      Grading took up most of my Friday and it takes up a lot of my time during the week but hey I got through 95 journals on Friday before I left school so I didn't have to tote them home and back. The only problem was I was at school Friday till 8pm. :( 

4.      Eating healthy flew out the window this past week but hey today is a fresh start. 

5.      My relationship with God is going well, I can see him working in my students lives and I'm glad he loves them as much as he loves me. 

6.      Sanity is really a fluid thing I would say, or at least I hope.

7.      Being the best teacher I can be, continues to include developing better relationships with my students, but also includes getting better at using best practices. 

8.      Job hunt, where to even begin, where do I even want to teach?

9.      Incorporating my aide is harder then I thought it would be because she is not as motivated to be incorporated as I thought she would be. 

10.  I did very well at using real world scenarios in each class. My students will not forget the bystander affect, or the main elements to attitude for a long time. :)

11. My new goal for this week is to communicate more effectively with my students when I am in front of the classroom. 

12. My second goal is one I learned about at the teacher fair for our in-service day. That is I want to be real with my students. This includes staying consistent and being open with them about who I am and what I expect from them. 

I think that is it for now, 

~Abby

Homecoming Week!

My teaching experience this week went pretty well. If I had to sum up my teaching experience for this week in one word; I would have to say that word would be hyperactivity. I say hyperactivity because my kids were hyper this week because it was spirit week. Their homecoming was Friday and the dance was on Saturday. Both my Wednesday and Thursday classes were cut short because of late start and the pep assembly. I can get awfully irritating to lose 16 minutes of class time in one week. Especially when the kids are so hyper it’s hard to steer them in any direction.

Luckily I wasn’t the only one facing the problem of hyperactivity in the classroom. My cooperating teacher also had to face this with his AP kids and my Aide in my government period was in on the ride with me. One of the things that I did to help make this last week better was I talked to other teachers about how they handled this week. I got tons of great advice and I implemented a lot of it.

Another thing I did a lot of this week was ask advice about how to better teach a subject and how to better modify my assignments to meet the needs of all my students. We share the social studies office with the special education teachers and they are always willing to give me advice about how to teach things better or how to better modify my assignments to meet the needs of all my students. A major question I had for my supervisor, which I forgot to ask him when he supervised me this week was; “How do you get the kids to higher order thinking when you can barely get them to follow directions.” Well I asked some of the special education teachers and they were very encouraging.

One thing I haven’t talked about is all the meetings, PLP’s and information that I’ve been getting from the experts and community at my school. They have a lot of great ideas to implement in my field and they remind the teachers of things that they should be doing and make sure that they are implementing good practicing techniques. I take a lot from these meetings and really try to implement what I’m learning in my classroom. The challenge is that they aren’t always thinking about the challenges that our individual students bring to the classroom. They especially forget our students’ lack of prior knowledge especially in the subject of Social Studies. I’ve heard other teachers mention how they are supposed to skim over the early part of American History because the students are supposed to already know that, but the problem is that they don’t.

A huge thing I learned in the past couple weeks of teaching is that I need to use authentic and real world problems in my lesson. This tends to be very easy for me in Psychology because it is easy to relate things back to the kids. We are learning about what makes them do the things we do. Of course I could always get better at making sure the examples fit my students better because that is important. In government this is a little harder. My students tend to bring up the real world problems in that class and as much as their examples sometimes scare me. For example, “what happens if I commit and murder in Illinois then go over to Indiana and commit a murder what will happen then can Illinois extradite me?” I really wanted to say don’t commit murders and you will be okay but I answered her question first before adding in but it would be much easier for you if you didn’t commit any murders.

After being observed a couple times now, if feel that I get better after every observation. My supervisor always has great things for me to improve on and ideas that will make my life easier in my classroom. I am constantly working on wasting as little time as possible in my classroom but I was also reminded this week by my supervisor that I need to make sure that I have my students’ full attention before I can move on in my teaching. This means that I might have to waste some time before I can move on.

In our education class we’ve been reading from Laurel Schmidts’ Classroom Confidential he has a lot of great ideas about communicating with parents and preparing for parent teacher conferences. What really helped me is when he talks about how my students culture can really affect my communications with the parents. I’ve communicated with a couple of my students’ parents already and we have had meet the teacher night already but we have not done parent teacher conferences. Schmidt says that it is important to get to know as much about my students culture as possible and I feel that I’ve really been able to do this especially in psychology. Another thing I’ve been trying to do with my parents is be proactive. If a student is struggling or not turning in assignments I first talk to the student but if that doesn’t solve anything then I email the parents. I learned that with a lot of my parents calling home doesn’t get me a call back most times. But emailing usually gets a response in less than a week. I think Schmidt’s ideas about being proactive and positive will help me really prepare for my first parent teacher conferences.

As for my goals this week:

1.      I’ve learned almost all of my students names and only occasionally forget. I’m still working on this with government.

2.      My social life is kind of nonexistent but with an upcoming wedding and all of its festivities I’m going to have to be careful about prioritizing.

3.      Grading went fine for this week it’s just a matter of getting all the late and retests in. Oh and all the late work students are turning in but I won’t complain about that. J

4.      Eating healthy continues, I now just have to remember to eat.

5.      My relationship with God is going good. I was mad at him for most of this week but he forgives me and we get stronger. Thank you for all your prayers for my observation, it did not go as well as I would have hoped but I got a lot more out of it then I would have if it did go well.

6.      Sanity is really a fluid thing I would say, or at least I hope.

7.      Being the best teacher I can be now finally includes developing better relationships with my students. Getting to know them more than just that initial ten percent.

8.      The principal panel this week gave me some better ideas about what I need to focus on when it comes to the job hunt.

9.      One of my new goals for this week is learning how to better incorporate my aide in government because she is a certified social studies teacher.

10.  Another goal is to get better at using real world scenarios with my students.

Emotional

If I had to describe this week in one word it would be educational. I took over full time teaching now and even though its one more class it adds a lot more work to my load. I also had to do progress reports this week. If I learned one thing from my students about life back home its that they can pretend they are too cool for school but the minute their Mom or Dad finds out they are missing work or doing poorly in a class is the minute they are scrambling to get late work in.


The biggest thing I learned this week was my students have very little prior knowledge in government. I was having my students do a scavenger hunt on the constitution and they were caught up on who goes in what branch. I figured they would at lease know congress is legislative and the president is executive but they didn’t even know that. My cooperating teacher said to assume they know nothing and now I know. I found out last week that in assuming my students have no prior knowledge I need to do more prior knowledge checks. If you remember from last week, I learned that instructions needed to be simplified for my students. This week I simplified instruction but not the assignment and got great results.

If there is one thing you learn from teaching at Eisenhower it’s that the students are very culturally diverse. I was teaching a lesson this past week about making sure when you are doing a sample of a culture that you need to make it representative. The issue my students ran into is they only know about how to represent their culture. I asked my students what a representative sample of the United States would entail and they said African Americans, Mexicans, and Caucasians. I don’t think they felt other cultures didn’t exist or shouldn’t be represented, I just don’t think that they think about representing those other cultures because they barely interact with them.

When we were talking about representative sampling another issue came up. I had said when a psychologist is studying an African American culture he can include a Caucasian in his sample because it is non representative. My students thought that was racist but when I explained that we all have our own culture, values and traditions they were excited that I recognized that. This week I will be going more into that with them when we talk about social psychology. 


As for my goals this week;

1. Prioritizing life and work to allow myself some emotional stability definitively happened but I was so exhausted by the end of the week. 
2. Starting my action research work for school happened as well, or at least I know what I'm doing and how I'm going to do my first implementation of it.  
3. I have now learned most of my students names, there are only a few now that I forget or switch up. 
4. My social life consisted of my roommate, a Friday night football game with another student teacher and a partial evening with another close friend. I think I did much better prioritizing.
5. I have learned that there will always be something to do when it comes to teaching and as long as i can keep up all has to be good. I got done grading for last week on Thursday and by Friday I had 120 tests and study guides to grade. 
6. Eating healthy consisted of eating what I had left in the fridge, which was still good seeing as I don't buy anything unhealthy anymore.
7. I will just put this out there, my relationship with God is going great but I need your prayers. 
8. Didn't get my sanity back this past week, lets hope for this week. 
9. Being the best teacher I can be this week includes collaborating and learning from who I can. 
10. Worrying about the job front is just causing more stress and I know I need to be applying places but right now my students are the ones I need to be putting my effort into. 

I believe I am getting observed this week so please wish me luck and please pray, I  need it. 


~Abby

Overwhelmed, and Emotionally Exhausted

I'm so sorry if this post seems rushed, I am running out of hours in the day to do things. 

If I tried to sum up this past week in one word, I would have to say it was exhausting. If I was able to do it in two I would say it was overwhelmingly exhausting. My students were so good this past week and I am very supported by my cooperating teacher and the other teachers in the building. I can’t imagine what I would be like to not have that kind of support while student teaching. My problem started with my lack of emotional preparation for student teaching. I failed to remember that real life would continue to take place during student teaching. So not only was this week and weekend full of lesson planning and grading but it was also full of class work for Monday, wedding planning with a close friend and friends who I rarely see these days. How does anyone keep sane during this process?

Through everything this week, I was still learning so much every day. The first major thing I learned was that I need to be writing on the board what my students should be learning for that day. Most schools in Illinois require you at least put the standard your teaching for the day on the board, but the school I am at doesn’t. I was talking to a SPED teacher and she says that it helps the students and the teacher if you can reference back to it. Besides just putting the standard on the board I should be writing the tentative schedule for the day. It helps the students prepare for what we will be doing and keeps all of us on track.

A major problem in psychology is that students don’t have much prior knowledge. I learned the best prior knowledge I can play off of is the prior knowledge brought in by science and math. Luckily this week that really helped. I had my students creating their own psychological study/experiment and it helped that my students knew the scientific method already as well as a little about independent and dependent variables. I played on this prior knowledge to help me show my students how a psychologist would use these methods to do experiments/studies.

Another huge lesson I learned this week is that my students need very structured instruction. They get overwhelmed with instruction that is written out in one paragraph which goes along with a rubric. I ended up having to redo a project sheet the day before my students started working on it because I knew the first sheet was going to be too overwhelming for them. This project went off very nicely and I don’t think it would have if I hadn’t redone the assignment sheet. I gave one section at a time for my students to do, so I wouldn’t overwhelm them and played to as many learning styles as I could in the project. I allowed some students to type the project up and others to write it. If they wanted to draw pictures to better show me what they meant they were also allowed. This helped several of my students who struggle with instructions and expressing what they know.

As for my goals for this past week;

1. I did figure out a better way for my students to do vocab and a better way to assess their vocab knowledge and even though my cooperating teacher didn't like it as much he could see how it was helping. 
2. I wasn't falling as behind as I though I was last week but I am still about a day behind where I wanted to be. Timing is very much a work in progress and I'm praying it gets better.
3. I had a few students call me out on learning their names, I think i'm up to knowing about seventy-five percent of their names, which for me is pretty good. 
4. I will be honest my social life really messed with me this week, I really need to learn how to prioritize. Its just hard, i'm a social person and I want to see my friends, especially because in December I may not see them for a while. 
5. As for procrastination, well grading is done, homework for school, not as done and planning needs to take more a priority but is going okay. I would like to be more ahead with planning but I find it hard to plan too far out. Procrastination is still very much a work in progress.
6. As for eating healthy, I found a app on my phone that tracks what I eat and when I exercise. This has been about the only goal that went amazing this week.
7. My relationship with God is doing amazingly, this week has been one of those weeks where I was forced to realize just how much I needed him. 
8. Staying sane has now been gone for about two weeks, lets hope I get my sanity back soon.
9. I think this week being the best teacher i can be is just going to be, working on my self emotionally. If my students teacher is not emotionally sound they are not getting the best teacher.
10. I can't even begin to think about finding a job even though I know I need to be doing stuff. I need to sign up for some tests though. 

My two goals for next week are going to be: 

1. Prioritizing life and work to allow myself some emotional stability. 
2. Starting my action research work for school. 

Please be praying for me, I really need it.

~Abby

What I'm really made of

Yesturday and today were days that were meant to break me. First of all Wednesday I was supervised and it was so hectic and I was so overwhelmed I wanted to scream. At one point during my supervision I had seven adults in the room along with 32 students. If you cant imagine what that is like, imagine being packed into a train car with 40 people and being in charge of making sure everything goes smoothly for a one hour trip. I really found out what I was made of during that period and I think I was the most stressed out during that point then I have been since the night before my AP psych test.

My supervisor said I did really well but man I was at my breaking point by the end of third period. He said that there are a lot of things I need to be working on and gave me some great tips and pointers. He also reassured me that I was where I needed to be at, at this point in student teaching.

Well luckily I get two periods off before I have to teach again and its wonderful. It allows me to take a break and do something that isn't working with students. Don't get me wrong I love my students but I do need my breaks too. I starting to really miss the boys I used to nanny for. They may have been hyper and sometimes naughty but at least I knew what to do with them. Each day I'm being presented with new challenges that just throw me through more loops. There's no way I could learn how to deal with all the different situations that are constantly flying at me as a student.

Today was rough in the morning but got better towards the afternoon. I feel so bad for my first class because that is the class that all the kinks in my lesson plan have to get worked out. Today they merciless, they were loud, they didn't listen, they were rude and I had to have my cooperating teacher help me with two of the girls that were close to pushing me over the edge. All I could do was breath. every time something else happened I just stopped and breathed for a moment or two. They were really challenging me and I made it through. I learned so much today about what I'm really made of.

All I can say is I hope tomorrow goes better for second period. I almost cried today and its way to soon to be crying about school. I know it will probably happen but its way to soon.

Anyways I found out that I am going to be taking government next Friday. I'm really nervous about teaching government, and I don't know why. It might be because the class is rowdy, or because there is so much going on in the government curriculum. So please pray for me and I appreciate all the love and support I'm getting.

Thanks for reading my impromptu update,
~Abby

I Went Back Monday!!!

Wow last week and the weekend have been quite busy. I epically failed at keeping up with my social life this week. I basically went to school, went to student teacher orientation and came home. The good news of the week is that my roommate is here!!! She drove all the way from California and got here in three days. It was nice having her finally here because I got to decorate. So we now have furniture and the walls are no longer barren.

As far as student teaching goes, i've been hard at work lesson planning. I started today on my first lesson which went okay. I wont pretend it went perfectly. My first class barely finished the assignment before class ended and a few even had to take the assignment home. My second class got finished with five minutes to spare (so we played a vocab game), and my last psychology class finished with twenty minutes to spare. I ask how in the world am I supposed to plan for that. It helped that after my first class I knew what questions I was going to get and addressed them before the questions were asked but wow.

I was told I was crazy today and no it wasn't because I was acting crazy. It was because I told my students they would have to write in full sentences. After being told I was crazy, I told them that they are going to have to write in complete sentences for the rest of their lives. They didn't seem to believe me and when I addressed the issue with my cooperating teacher he seemed to think it wasn't an issue worth fighting with the students over. Again I ask; Are you kidding me? I was looking at my schools report card and only 40 percent of my students pass the english portion of the state test. This means that my 60 percent of my students are not at the reading and writing level they should be at. So when my cooperating teacher made it seem like this was an issue not worth fighting for I have to disagree.

On a lighter note my students are really opening up with me and I'm really getting to see all the different personalities in my classroom. I have to say i'm loving it. I end everyday excited for the next day. I am excited to lesson plan because I know I am actually going to be able to teach it. I know I wont always end each day with this feeling but I'm being reasured everyday that this is what I am meant to do. At this point in my experience I feel like I'm the luckiest person in the world to be finally doing what I am meant to do.

So for those of you interested in my anecdote its going to be less rambling and more structured thanks to my education class that goes along with my student teaching. Don't worry it will still be me, I just have to include somethings that I normally include anyways. For instance I have to tell you my goals for the next week. Here they are:

1. One of my goals Is to teach well planned lesson plans that have many enriching activities built into them that apply to several types of learners.
2. My second goal is to get to know my students names better. By the end of the week I hope to know half their names.

I've already been working on goals so those will just be added to my list. For those of you who are interested I find that I have four main type of learners in my class. Students who learn better when they hear instructions, students who learn better by doing hands on activities, students who learn better repeating instructions or talking through steps and students who learn better by seeing me do what they are supposed to do.

According to my check list:

1. The balencing seriously went onto the other extreme from last week. The only people I saw this week were the people in my education class and my roommate.So I will keep trying with the balencing act.
2. I really failed at the procrastination thing this week. I waited till Sunday to do all my work and I feel that it really came out in my homework. I care more about my lesson plans so that suffered far less then my homework. Again, I will keep trying!!! Maybe some accountability will help.
3. Eating healthier is going really well, I ran out of most of my healthy food over the weekend and was too lazy to go shopping for more. I have a feeling if I don't, eating healthy might suffer.  
4. I need to be held more accountable for my relationship with God. Especially when it comes to going to church. I just haven't found a church I like. Any suggestions?
5. I didn't go crazy this past week even though student teaching orientation almost did me in.
6. Being the best teacher I can be now includes being patient and being assertive (mainly not letting students walk all over me).
7. On the note of finding a job, its going to take a lot more work then I thought it would. :( But I did get my resume and a cover letter done. :) Now time to go out and get those letters of recommendations.

I think that is it for now. No picture this time. Sorry!!!
Thank you for reading and please continue to pray,
~Abby

Oh yeah I forgot to mention my first observation is this Wednesday. Wish me luck!!!

Are You Coming Back Monday?

Wow I wont lie this week has been one heck of a week. Not only did I have two full days of meetings that all teachers have to attend but I had another day of getting to know the school, getting my Id card, my log in, my car registered, and planning stuff for the first day with our students. I also had a meeting for one of my students whose mother (putting this delicately) likes to make sure things go her way. Needless to say that meeting in itself was an eye opener.

Thursday was an amazing day, I got to meet my students and really see how the first day of school looks on the teacher side of things. The kids were rambunctious and down right crazy by eight period. I was exhausted but exhilarated at the same time. The kids really seemed to be responding well to me. After my cooperating teacher did a small getting to know me thing, he had the kids fill out note cards about themselves but didn't share them that day. We had about ten minutes of free time so I decided I would try to learn their names. I did pretty good for me. Remembering 120 names is kinda hard.

Even though I was exhausted on Thursday evening I went to my first White Sox Game!!!! It was pretty awesome I was blessed to get a free ticket from my amazing friend. The Sox lost against the Cleveland Indians but the experience was priceless. I got back around 11pm and was pretty much delirious with exhaustion, good thing I wasn't driving!

Friday proved to be a bit more challenging then Thursday. The first day mania had worn off and the kids were just pissed to be back in school now. Most of the teachers were going over their syllabi today and the kids were bored out of their skulls. My cooperating teacher went over his today and went over the students' responses to the note cards. This was my real first reality check. The kids were loud, they weren't listening or being respectful and if I heard another kid yell and call another kid stupid I was going to scream. I decided that I needed to talk about respect right away. My cooperating teacher didn't care what I did after he was done so with less then ten minutes to spare at the end of each class I talked to my students' about the importance of respect in my class and how disrespect wasn't something I would tolerate (trust me it needed to be done). I also had the kids fill out clock buddies. This will hopefully allow me to have the kids pair up quickly and effectively. Although with a test on my eighth period, i'm not so sure how well its going to work.

On a brighter note; the teachers at my school are amazing. I don't know how many came up to me and asked me how I was doing, how the first day was going and how they could help. I felt so welcomed and felt like they accepted me as one of their own. The funnier side of this is that all day today teachers have been jokingly asking me if I'm going to be back Monday morning. I reassure them that I will be and they just laugh as they walk away. I'm not quite sure how to feel about this yet.

I have lots to do this weekend, including my own homework and lesson planning.

According to my check list:

1. I might have the opposite problem then I worried about when it comes to being social. I have to work on a good balance of socializing and working this semester. 
2. Procrastinating is still an issue, but I'm working on it. 
3. Eating healthier was going pretty well until the baseball game but I am back on track (hopefully!).
4. My relationship with God is an ongoing process
5. Not going crazy is going to be harder then I thought
6. Being the best teacher I can be is now going to include working on my patience. 
7. On the note of finding a job, i'm thinking about applying to teach for America but i'm not sure. 

I'm hoping to know 30 percent of my students names by the end of next week and I'm hoping to improve my classroom management which I'm going to add to my checklist. 

I think that's it for my first week student teaching,

Please pray for me; I'm going to need it

~Abby

P.S. Friday's are casual days. This was me today, how did I do for casual?