First Week

I began on Monday. Up until today I have been observing and meeting the classes and various department members. I found the suburban environment quite different from my previous experiences. Since May 08 I have been a member of HeadsUp, an Americorps program. The past summer I taught full time at Malcolm X Elementary and Garfield Elementary on Alabama Ave. With other university students, I taught a 4th grade class. Our emphasis is on literacy. the program is a year long, so the fall and spring are composed of after school tutoring. Last semester I also taught an immersion English class for the adult Latino population in Adams Morgan. Lastly, I did my practicum placement at a charter school in Dupont. These varied experiences have taught me a great deal about teaching in the city, but I wanted to try my hand at a suburban school.


The suburban school is quite an interesting experience. School politics run rampant (which happens at any school). The student population is NEEDY. Never have I experienced so many extraneous medical and psychological issues, ranging from the medical need to eat at any point in the day to panic attacks. It does not compute to me how an high schooler who, granted, witnessed a natural catastrophe, can leave the classroom when ever s/he pleases, while 4th graders are out every other week for a funeral of a family member, do not have access to guidance councilors, school psychologists, or depression screenings. Allowing students access to the counseling center to work through girl fights or to complain about how a teacher does not like you in the middle of class is ridiculous. Babying our students does not get them prepared for the real world.


Okay okay, enough ranting...moving on. I have noticed a few issues in the classroom that cannot be tolerated while I am teaching or being observed. The biggest disciplinary areas are sleeping in class and disrespectful talking. I understand why Mrs. Lemon allows this to happen, they are 17 after all and its their grade. I am a proponent of handing off this responsibility to the students, but this will not fly while I am being observed. Thus it must stop. I plan on combating the problems in multiple ways. First, I think deliberate and thoughtful lesson planning can make more interesting classes. I plan on breaking the up the period in about 3o min activities. This way hopefully the students won't have a chance of being bored. Second, since the students will not be accustomed to this in the beginning, I plan on having them stand and stretch it out. The past few days I have been warning the students of this change and have tried to explain why it is so necessary for the students to stay awake. This seems to be appreciated to some extent. The talking issue is a little more difficult. Now students are in seats that they chose, so I do have the ability to change their seats, which they would hate. We'll see.


My cooperating teacher Mrs. Lemon was out today and will be out on Wednesday. Since I do not have my sub license..yet..., another licensed person must be in the room. This sub was a parent of two seniors and a good friend of Mrs. Lemon. We watched a movie on Frederick Douglass and did a video worksheet. The video was a bit long at 90 min. First period went a little rocky. I had the popular crowd chatting and copying each other, even to the annoyance of other students. After the class, I realized that I need to be much more firm, at least for the first few weeks. I learned my lesson for the second class. First, I tried to make the movie more interesting and also to keep them on track with the work sheet, I would stop the movie and add tidbits of information. This seemed to help keep their attention. Also, I warned the students that if they were sleeping or copying I would take their papers. Copying also decreased. I also tried to help students who missed something one on one. Many of the questions could be elicited through guiding questions. This period we also encountered some disciplinary problems with passing alieve through a jacket. Apparently these two students have a history of playing teachers by using their medical problems. When I took the jacket, the one student left the room with a panic attack(luckily, Mrs.Z took that one on). At the end of class I reminded the girls that I was in high school six years ago so don't insult my intelligence. I'll need to keep my eye out. This period Mrs.Z slipped me a note telling my I will be an amazing teacher :). Last period went fine although we lost them kind of early...but it is about to be a four day weekend!


Wednesday will be my first real lesson and I am excited. I have a lot of work to do this weekend to get all of my materials ready. I will be posting my lesson plan later this weekend as well as my assignments for Methods--if I every get my books.