“Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.”

Week of Sept 12th entry. Taken from my Student Teaching Journal (for class.)

These short weeks in the classroom are killing me. I would love to be there all week long. Nevertheless, I am learning a great deal and getting more involved with the class. Besides wandering around the class all day and helping with various jobs, I get to do three main things. These three tasks allow me to show different sides of myself to the students: authoritative Ms. Peterson, fun Ms. Peterson, and teacher Ms. Peterson.

So far I have been leading the students to and from the classroom, transition times. This is the time where I get to show my authoritarian side; the time that I get to practice my mean face. There is no talking in the hallways which seems to be very difficult for most 4^th/5^th graders. Last week I gave my first “check” to a student because they were misbehaving during transition time. I don’t think the student thought I was allowed to give out checks. I was overcome with such a weird feeling…guilt. I felt bad for punishing the student. In hindsight, the girl was attempting to beat another student with her shoe and the check was completely necessary. Now, I am somewhat sad and happy to say that I have no guilt when I hand out checks. Usually the students return to their seats and get back to work. It makes for a more productive classroom.

I have also been introducing the class to various games. This is obviously where I get to show my fun side as a teacher. At this age, if they sit for too long, I think their heads might pop off. They become so full of energy that it is nearly impossible for some of them to get anything accomplished. Thus, we will play a 10-15 minute game to get some of the energy out. One game that the students seem to love is pretty simple. Grab a deck of cards and assign an exercise for each suit (i.e. Clubs would be jumping jacks). Draw a name and the student will come pick a card. The entire class does the exercise. On days where they return from PE class wound up, we play Silent Ball. This is a game where the students must throw a kooshling ball throughout the room without making any noise. If they drop the ball then they have to return to their desk. If they make a bad toss or make some sort of noise then they must also return to their desk. I like to mix things up by having them throw with only one eye open or standing on one leg. This makes the game go by quicker and gets us back on task.

Lastly, I have been doing read aloud time. We usually have two read aloud times. One is midway through the day. The students have a healthy snack and eat it while the teacher reads from a picture book. Towards the end of the day the teacher reads from a more difficult chapter book (Currently we are reading Becoming Naomi Leon). I have taken over reading from the picture book. This is also a part of our language lesson. This week I read Hello Harvest Moon to the students. This is a beautiful picture book with wonderful figurative language. While reading the book I have been encouraged by my host teacher to stop frequently and discuss the text. This week we talked about adjectives, adverbs, verbs, similes, onomatopoeias, and alliterations. I’m not sure why read alouds feel so far outside of my comfort zone. However, practice makes perfect and I try my best.

Finally, I am hoping to possibly do a science lesson this next week. The school will be wrapping up it’s MAPS testing (finally) which has been taking up the majority of our science time. I am excited to get going on lessons but will feel more comfortable once our routine is back to normal.