First off, I want to apologize to all who have continuously checked in on me to see how things have been going with my student teaching. As I stated in my first entry, I would try to update weekly…well, that first entry was 5 weeks ago! I cannot believe how fast time has gone by…as I stated, it has been 5 weeks since I started!
As I am sure that all of you will agree with me, time is a virtue. It is cherished and blessed by all of us, but sometimes I wonder if we forget about the time that we truly do have. I have always cherished every moment that I am in and enjoy the time that I do have with everything in my life. However, during the past 5 weeks in the classroom, I have found myself questioning myself regarding that: “Do I fully cherish and enjoy every minute? Am I taking those moments for granted?” I have found myself enjoying some of the simple things in life…things that I cannot even describe with words. These “simple things” are found within my classroom and students, as well as outside of the school. I couldn’t be more blessed with the opportunity I have been given and to be writing a new chapter in my life.
The past 5 weeks cannot be put into a few words, and so I am not going to bore you with every detail of what has happened, but rather a few short sentences about each week.
Week 1: All I can say is that I am glad that day 1, was not “day 1.” I was able to greet each one of my students by name as they walked into the classroom and I personally knew each one of them…they weren’t just a face. I didn’t have to “waste” time to get to know the students, the routine, the school, etc. After getting back into the routine after 2 days, I started by taking over part of the morning. It was a great feeling to back in the classroom with the kids and to be able to start teaching them right away.
Week 2: This week was another great week! I started to take over more of the morning, which would have me teaching ½ days at this point. Our morning consists of a morning meeting, sharing, etc., a morning literacy block, and centers. A lot goes into planning the centers in regards to making sure that the centers are academic based, as well as having them theme-based. And with the planning, you can never really plan for more than a day at a time…the planning of each day is based on the needs of the children from previous lessons, their ability levels, standards, etc.
Week 3: Oof…I do not even know what to say about this week. This was a very rough week for me, as well as my cooperating teacher. It was 3 days of students being non-compliant, not doing their center work, not making safe choices, and the list could go on. At any given moment throughout the day, over ½ of the class was not listening to me (at this point I had over ¾ of the day). I tried several different methods to be able to get the kids to be able to listen and do their best learning and so did my cooperating teacher. Nothing was working for either of us! It wasn’t until day 4 that we had a bit more “leverage” on the kiddos…they had sledding that afternoon with their 5th grade buddies! Long story short with this one, I had 5 of 23 students who could go outside right away to go sledding, while the other 18 had to stay inside and have a meeting with myself regarding the choices they chose to make. This meeting had intentions to put a lil bit of fear into them to make better choices within the coming days. Day 5 of this week was the best, but still had kids who were having trouble with making good choices.
Week 4: This week had a few moments that were not so good, but the good definitely outweighed the bad. The tally system continued throughout the entire week, as well as a penny reward system that each kindergarten classroom has introduced (for something that they do during the month of February called Kindertown…they earn pennies and can “buy” things at the end of the month). The pennies coincided with the tally marks…each tally mark made was a penny owed to me. Pennies could be earned as well, which some kids were able to do. It was also during this week that I took on full time teaching, with a few of the afternoon lessons being co-taught. It was great to be able to co-teach in such a way to be able to be more effective in our teaching and to level our teaching to meet the individual needs of the students.
Week 5: Wow…I cannot believe how well the students are now doing. It has been a great week of full-time teaching. We are still co-teaching a few lessons with math, since we are trying to figure out how to best use our time that we have set aside for math each day. We have found it to be very effective to teach a 10-15 minute whole group lesson and then to break the students up into leveled groups and have math stations/centers for the remaining time with the stations/centers being related to the whole group lesson. This seems to be working great with the kids and we are able to reach the struggling students.
So, that has been my first 5 weeks in a nutshell. Despite the one rough week, that bump has been overcome and things have truly been wonderful. I couldn’t ask for a better cooperating teacher, a group of students, or other faculty and staff within the school. I only have a total of 7 days left with my kindergarten kiddos before I complete 10 weeks in another placement (2nd grade). And I promise, I will truly try to update weekly ;)
