First full week down and things I believe are going very well.
I have practically taken over all of 3rd block honors. I gave them an intro quiz on scientific method, variables and lab safety. As a majority the class did remotely well. They also have been doing bottle ecosystems as a side activity from other ecology discussion. We have discussed food webs, food chains, food pyramids, intraspecfic and interspecific interactions within species. I have learned some classroom management and still working on it. I need to work on raining them in when they come into the classroom, I feel like when they come in they run straight back to their bottles and the "structure" is misleading. Today we did a vital commodity lab where the students were different organisms and they meet up with students and eat or be eaten or nothing. They used beans to show transfer of energy and if they ran out of beans they died. Out of all the days today was the most stressful I was a bit frazzled. Today was good learning though. I mean I can't expect to go in and have perfect day everyday because that is what student teaching is for to realize what I can and can't put up with and set boundaries for things and realize that these are basis of being an educator. Monday I am going in starting with structure, students must sit down and start warm up as soon as they are in the classroom, not waiting for the bell to ring. Also I graded their energy pyramid quiz and I need to do some relooping with direction of energy flow.
W is great she is very constructive, but with a past that I have had with observations (at a previous job not to be named:) ) I am very reluctant to them. The past observations have been nothing but criticizing and a period of time where you have to completely defend yourself. So when she starts to constructively criticize I start to get really nervous and defense mechanisms start to build. Ive told myself it's a learning process.
Monday at seminar they assigned our ISL project which is all based on improving student learning. I have to administer a pretest teach a min of 5 lessons and then give post test and show growth in every student. So now I am preparing for that.
I may be only posting one post a week since I am getting into the thick of things... but I AM LOVING IT!
It's hard for anybody to take criticism, dear girl. You have the right attitude. Just ask--what can I leaarn from this? Before you know it--you'll acclimate to it. I'm sure W has your best interests at heart.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I do when I'm teaching a class is to use music to reign them in. One time, a bunch of students walked in with ear buds, etc. I could hear the music coming out of their ipods. It was very distracting. We have a smart station, so I used the computer and turned on some classical music. They sort of looked startled, but they got the message, took out the ear buds, and were perfectly fine. I don't know if something like this would work for you, but you may think of a variation on it.