It was very hard for me to leave the students alone for 90 minutes. My CT said that it would be okay because they were seniors (you can’t do something like this with freshman), but it still made me very nervous. Even if they are working diligently (which I doubt they were doing the whole time) something could happen and it would be good for the teacher to be close by. They could do their caucus with me sitting in the room. I could sit in the back and grade and that would not bother their meeting, but then I could watch over them and make sure everyone stays safe, and I can answer any questions they may have.
Block 3 had some problems. There were only five Republicans so they were in the conference room of room 214 and the rest of the class, the Democrats, were in the classroom. DT came to get me half way through the block to ask a question, and when I went into the room to answer it I noticed that everyone was in groups and three students were doing all of the work. I made them all come together and sit in a circle and go through the bills so that they could decide which ones they were going to support and which ones they would not support. In this instance it would have been good for me to be in the room, or to stop by earlier so that everyone participated and had a say in committee appointments.
Block 1: I graded their essay outlines, which weren’t very good, but I have a very hard time giving people a poor grade. My CT said that in the long run if they do poorly on one thing their grade won’t suffer too much, but it is important that they know they did not complete an assignment properly. I find that grading is much easier after I look at a couple of the assignments so I can decide how I want to grade it.
Student teacher meeting: had a first year at JHS teacher (15 years) talk to us. Gave some good pointers: be clueless; don’t make friends too quickly; have a classroom management plan for the first day, amend it and re-present it to the class after a month; it will get easier.
No comments:
Post a Comment