Observation #1

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Student teaching has been a crazy experience so far, but also deeply satisfying.  My co-op and I get along really well, and I'm really enjoying getting to know my students. despite the challenges I'm coming up against, things are going well. If anything seems to be going poorly in a lesson I'm able to adjust it between periods so that the next class goes the way I want it to go. Right now, lesson planning isn't even my biggest hurdle. I feel pretty comfortable planning things, and then adapting them on the fly. My biggest hurdle is of course, student behavior. It's the one thing I wish we had dealt with a little more in school. Even a one time seminar on how to handle the emotional impact of these things I think would have been helpful as a resource. I think I'm mudding through pretty well right now, and Mrs. Flynn does a really great job of reminding me that the kiddoes behaviors aren't reflections on me personally. My lesson on Tuesday that I was observed in went fairly well by my standards. I taught what I wanted to teach, the kids were engaged, (although the period Shannon observed wasn't as lively as my afternoon classes) and they learned the skills in a measurable way via my Exit Tweets. These tweets proved that a significant portion of the kids understood the lesson and were able to synthesize the material into a sentence of their own. It was pretty cool to see.
I do regret that I had to do so much "drill and skill," but since I'm only visiting in Mrs. Flynn's classroom, I wanted to fit my own lesson into her existing framework just to start. I wanted to smoothly transition into the teaching position, and then start to do things more my way in my literature units. I can't wait to continue teaching, and I'm looking forward to my Anne Frank Unit starting Wednesday.

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