Frustrated and Optimistic

Frustrated that is my one word that could summarize this entire week. I was frustrated with my government students my 3^rd period students and myself. I thought hey I’m finally getting the hang of this but no I’m still struggling. I was getting observed this week and a lesson that went fine in my 2^nd period went horribly awry in my 3^rd period which happened to be the period I was being observed in. My supervisor was awesome and gave me some helpful comments about reflecting and trying to figure out what was different and what I could change. I still felt horrible about the observation. I just wanted to prove that I had improved as much as I felt I’d improved. In the past couple weeks. Well I started to breath after my observation and tried to relax and when my 6^th period walked in I forced myself to be happy they were there. They are perceptive students and I love that period anyway. So about two minutes into the period I was happy they were there and they had me smiling again faster than I could have done.

I was still feeling pretty negative about student teaching so the next day I made a list of positive things about myself and student teaching. I also had my facebook friends help me. It really did help and I stayed positive rather then sink further into a depressive mood. So on the note of staying positive I will tell you my strengths before I tell you my weaknesses in this past week.

Well my strengths when it comes to the rules of English, grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization and syntax are limited. On the positive side because I have struggled so much on this subject I’m very good at teaching different learning strategies to my diverse learners. As a result of my struggles in this area I can empathize with my students. I am also open and honest with them about this area in which I struggle and they can see that everyone struggles at something. As a result of my struggles in this area I make sure that I’m not always making my students do written work and I’m giving my students diverse teaching activities that a meet the diverse learners in my classroom.

A positive that I do have is I’m pretty good at expressing ideas orally. I’m good at coming up with explanations my students can learn from and that apply to my students. I practice what I’m going to say in my classes and work on my examples ahead of time so I can express ideas clearly. Another positive about me as a teacher in the classroom is I do listen well to my students. When my students ask questions or answer a question one thing I do is restate or summarize what they have asked me to help my other students understand. This also tells the student that I’ve heard them correctly and that their questions or contribution was a good one. This also helps because a lot of my students have a problem with understanding English or speaking English clearly. I have a lot of English as a second language students and when I restate the question or even repeat directions I’m giving it allows my students time to fully understand what is being said.

It’s important for me to be a good model when it comes to effective reading, writing, speaking and listening. My college supervisor and I have talked about the writing aspect in my classroom because this is a huge struggle for me. I am a terrible speller and it shows even though I don’t want it too. It’s important that I’m making sure that if I make a mistake I let my class know I’ve realized this mistake. If I forget how to spell something it’s okay to ask if someone knows. As for the other effective communication skills I can show this by reading to my students more and continuing to be a good speaker and listener.

When it comes to my classroom I learned by reading Schmidt that students may have trouble getting that first sentence or even word on paper. They may have so much to say but don’t really know how to write it on paper. Having my students talk about what they want to write down might be better than having them write the information down and then talking about it. I also learned from reading Schmidt that I don’t have to be a great writer to enjoy the writing process as a teacher. I can improve my skills as a writer in the classroom while I’m improving my students writing skills. I’ve seen just by teaching my students to break down words to decipher the meaning I am also improving my vocabulary and writing skills. I also learned from my reading this week that I need to be using more primary documents in all of my classes. Students are naturally curious and from my experience with past lessons the students like those lessons better. Another thing I found myself interested in doing and what I have been doing with my students is recreating the past. I could do this more with psychology and the experiments down in psychology and government has already done a lot of recreating. We recreated our need for federalism, and our need for a constitution. I am thinking of ideas to recreate our need for the two branches in congress for the upcoming week.

As for my goals this week

1. I’ve got almost all my government kids names out of necessity. There are only a few I forget.
2. My social life revolves around school and the wedding. I’m so excited for next weekend but it put a lot of stress on getting work down this weekend.
3. Eating healthy returns but not with a vengeance. I need to work on eating better. I’m going to get sick if I don’t.
4. My relationship with God continues to grow because I’m constantly reminded of my reliance on him during this trying time in my life. I’ve recently set up bible verses to come to my phone every morning and Its really helping set my sights on God every day.
5. Sanity this next coming week is going to focus on making me stay positive.
6. Job hunt… I need to get those letters of recommendation forms out to my professors. Oh and study for my two tests in November.
7. I worked on being consistent and I am finding what best practices work with which classes.
8. I’ve found that it’s really hard to predict what questions my students are going to ask and getting back to them with a more complete answer is better and easier.  
9. I’m adding a new permanent goal into this list of goals. That is to stay positive and to stay the person I know I am.
10. Another goal is to get better at writing in front of my students, but also show my students how I’m working on becoming a better writer.

Please pray for a more calm and stress free week for me,

Abby

Here is my art project to remind me to be optimistic. Thank you Jodie for reminding me that I need to be optimistic

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