Wow! This is a word that's popped in my head a lot these past few days. I officially started in the classroom this past Monday (Aug 16th). I am working in a third grade room with 19 students. The school is unique in that in 2008 it was flooded along with a large portion of the neighborhood. This created a different challenge outside of already having a decent low income population. I've talked to multiple teachers and they have told me about how different the students are now than they were before and how the school it self has changed. The faculty at Taylor are so welcoming and have made me feel right at home! It seems that I have started up conversations with many of them then later realized that we didn't even introduce ourselves because it just seemed natural.
I have been placed in a room with an outstanding teacher! She is definitely what we would call a master teacher. She is filled with information and ideas and all sorts of stories for me about teaching. Walking into Mrs. S's room you can tell that she has taught her share of years. The room is exploding with books, educational toys, posters, you name it she probably has it! My favorite part of the room (and seems to be the kids favorite too!) is the 'book nook.' This is a mostly enclosed area with a few shelves of books, a wicker seat and a few stuffed animals. Just gazing at it makes reading seem more enjoyable! When the students are done with their assigned work they know that they can walk to the 'book nook' and choose a book to read while sitting on the floor or chair and read. It's awesome to see children so excited to read and look at books! Watching Mrs. S teach is also fascinating. She uses her past experiences as stories and lots of expression that captivates the students. It's easy to tell when a teacher is mediocre just by looking at the students. This third grade class listens to her and is interested in what she has to say. She also incorporates using the students names when she does catch them not paying attention in a way that doesn't disrupt the learning flow and brings the students attention back in.
The first day was all about observing and taking everything in (which was a lot!). Yesterday I was able to take two students into the hallway so that they could work on their math tests. Both students have a difficult time with staying on task and are below their learning level. The first student, the girl, seemed to just need instruction given to her directly. She was over all happy and loved to talk about anything and everything other than the math that was in front of her. I believe this is probably why it wasn't completed in the first place. She did well when I directed her attention to the test and read allowed the directions. For multiplication and division she had a hard time remembering what to do, but after being reminded of the process she proceeded in doing them well.
The second student, a little boy, had a bit more difficulty. He seemed to be easily overwhelmed and frustrated when he saw that he had a lot of problems to complete. He also told me that he was going to then have more work to catch up on because he was in the hallway. It seemed that he knew that he was a slower worker than the other students and he was upset by this. He began working on some of the problems and would get easily frustrated when he came to something he didn't know. The first part was counting numbers then writing tallies, then ending it by putting the information into a bar graph. It looked complicated on the page and it had multiple steps where as the problems before were mostly one step. This then caused him to cry. I pulled the test a way for a second and had him just breath and then we had some small talk. This helped him calm down and his eyes lit up when he was able to just talk about his friends for a minute. After he settled down and was in a better mood we proceeded with the test. I showed him how to break it down and only had him do one direction at at time. He was then able to do this at perfectly. I feel that he sees that he has a lot do do and becomes overwhelmed and looses confidence in himself. I think I will continue to help show him how to break big things down into smaller categories.
Today was the faculty meeting in the morning then staff learning/development in the afternoon. The morning session was interesting in that we it started with a small raffle (for a bag and a dinner at cici's pizza) then they moved into talking about disciplinary procedures. They were discussing when to send students to the office and when issues could be dealt with by the teacher. The comment was made about when the teacher sends the student to the office it relays an idea of lack of power to the student. The student then sees this as too difficult of the teacher to handle and in some situations they won. I had never thought of that idea in that way. It seems to be such a easy way out if a teacher can't deal with the child to just have them sent to the office. The teachers then discussed ways to deal with the issue in the classroom or one-on-one with the student in order to keep the respect and also create a stronger bond with the student. The student can then see that the teacher wants to help (if there is an issue) and that the teacher won't put up miss behaving. One idea that was presented was instead of sending the student to the office, have a person from there come and watch over the class while the teacher steps outside with the student. This then shows that it is something that needs to be dealt with immediately and the whole class isn't as disrupted. The afternoon staff learning was a continuation of situations and ways to deal with them. Once everyone came up with the rules they were then going to create a small book and use these as a guide line so that everyone was on the same page.
Another way I felt "at home" with the staff was that during this session they included me as if I was another teacher rather than the student. I was able to participate in the activities and when in table discussions they asked what I thought on different things. At first I thought they would probably think of me more as inferior since they've had more experience and are all older.
These past few days have already been exceptionally rewarding and I'm excited to see what's more to come!
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