Looking back at how far I have come, it astonishes me. Recently, I looked the video of me teaching last year and I see a huge difference in my teaching. I don’t get nervous often at all, and, now, I have a better handle on classroom management. Mind you, I still have lots of room to improve but I am slowly getting there. It all just comes with experience.
Something that I have learned thus far this year is that I really need to teach and review a concrete set of expectation and consequences. I feel, after talking with my host teacher, that this will drastically improve how my students react in class. However, it’s too late in the semester to try to start fresh with them. Ultimately, I’ll just have to wait to use this later on.
This week was the week after homecoming. I was crowd control for the homecoming football game and chaperoned the dance. Both were eye-opening experiences. Let’s just say, my children are not going to dances. I cannot believe how kids dance these days. On a better note, the football game ended without any conflict or bad behavior. Not only is this a few checks on the good, ol’ rubric but some valuable experience with my kids outside of the classroom. They seemed really excited and surprised to see me out and about. I will say this, it was an experience I won’t forget and I have fun.
Now, back to the classroom; the kids were so much better this week. The behavior was back to normal, if not better, and the classroom was a little quieter. My lesson plans were due to the principal this week, and after getting them all ready, I got good reviews. Maybe, I actually do know what I am doing……imagine that. As I touched upon last week, I researched a few different ways to get a room quieter. So, this week I used them and they work pretty well. I have only used a few but it seems to work. However, I see myself slipping back into my old rhythms and have to correct myself here and there. Thinking about my relationship with my students, I really do, for the most part, think my kids like me. I feel that they respect me - well as much as they can respect a student-teacher- and can joke around with me, too. I guess you can say, I am having a good year, but each day is its own battle.
Now onto the fun stuff, action research. Everything is going according to plan. This last data collection of averages and scores was a little rough. Yet, I do not blame my students for the decrease in the scores because I blame homecoming. Homecoming weekend, I feel, had a big part in why the scores were low. Despite giving the test on the Tuesday after the test, I feel that my kids still were amped up from homecoming and chose not to study. The scores were by no means low, just below usual. Additionally, the notes were not as complete as usual, which could be another factor in why they were low. I will just see what happens on the next exam; this exam being a big one because we are going into ancient Greece.
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