4th and 5th Weeks of School

JOHN - Well, I haven't been the best at updating this blog but I also have been working hard at school and having fun on the weekends. Therefore, I won't apologize too much.

The last couple weeks of school have seemed to fly by. I am now teaching 3 class periods each day (6th - 8th periods). I am really enjoying all the extra responsibility that I am picking up and beginning to realize how teaching the same lesson is a double-edged sword. You see, when you teach a lesson the first time, those first hour students are your guinea pigs. During the lesson, I can immediately see what is working and what doesn't. As much as ISU pushes its students to write reflections each day, I have no choice but to reflection each class period. Heck, I will reflect during the class period. My point is, by the time I get to my 2nd and 3rd classes, I have worked out the kinks and adjusted the lesson enough where it's beneficial to the students and more comfortable for me.

Mrs. Schiebel has been really supportive and her feedback (constructive criticism) has been most helpful to me. Almost daily, she provides me with praise. But she also gives me areas of focus in which I need to work and I appreciate her honesty. For example, this past Friday, I had a difficult time keeping the 7th period class in line. 7th hour is my most challenging class because there are more students with special needs and they are quite the social bunch. Plus, there are some combination of students that just shouldn't be sitting next to one another. Anyway, I expressed my frustration with Mrs. Schiebel and she gave me some great advice. First, she said that I should never punish the entire class. Most of the students are good and if you punish everyone, you begin to lose ALL the students. Instead, she said that I should deal with those students at the root of the problem. Sometimes it's as easy as turning the desk around and facing the wall. Or sending a student to "Isolation Island". Or pulling that student out of the classroom and having a talk. And if comes down to it, request a conference with the parents. And it's important that once the issue is resolved, I have to be sure to go back to being positive and not focus on the negative. That's difficult for me because I can sometimes be impatient and a little bit of a control freak. I have gotten better as I have grown older and I do appreciate the insanity that is middle school students. I just know that I have to adjust my teaching and develop discipline techniques which work for me and help the students.

This week, I taught my multi-cultural lesson. Mrs. Schiebel and I came up with the idea of showing the students how to use an abacus. I have never used an abacus but I have seen one used, I just wasn't sure how to operate one. Well, after conducting some research and background history on the abacus, I have become quite fascinated by it and all its many variations. For those unfamiliar with an abacus, it's a device originated in Chinese culture but used during the Roman Empire and later adopted by Russia and other countries. The Western version is more basic where the Asian counterpart is much more complicated. Needless to say, I am going to buy one for my classroom (probably the Chinese version) and use it a supplemental aid if need be. If anything, it will be a good history lesson and I love me some history.

Over the past two weeks, RMS has had something called "No Freedom Friday". NFF is where all students who are failing (it can be just one subject), are sent to a classroom where they can complete all their make-up work. The first week, I spent over three hours organizing who was going and what work needs to be made up. Well, I decided to take it one step further and get ALL make-up work for ALL students who need to complete it. As many students that have been sick since school started, that means there is a lot of make-up work. On a side note, the flu is going around and kicking a lot of students' butts and I average about 3 students out each class period. This past Friday for 8th hour, I had 7 students missing; that's a lot of kiddos. Anyway, once I got all of that work together for those students "failing" math, I saw that only 4 of the 8 students had missing work. That means the other 4 students had all of their work in and were failing math for other reasons. However, those students still had to go to NFF. This doesn't mean they had make-up work for another class. But I feel it is more important for those students to be in class than working on make-up work. I think NFF can work but there are some kinks that need to be worked out and I feel there needs to be tutors on hand to assist students that do struggle, regardless of the subject.

The further they get behind in math, the more difficult it is to catch up. Plus, math has a very tight curriculum here in Texas and we don't have time to wait for our students to go at their pace. In fact, the schedule is so tight that we have very little leeway where we could incorporate a make-up day. This is where the students and parents need to step up and come in for tutoring or during advisory. There is only so much we can do in the time that we have and there has to be some responsibility by the students.

One thing I can recommend to any student teacher is that you need to move around the classroom. On Thursday, I told Mrs. Schiebel that I felt I was confining myself behind the overhead. I didn't feel as if I was moving around enough. Well, that means I needed to become more familiar with the E-board. The E-board is similar to a Smartboard. It allows one to use a portable mouse pad and electronic pen where you can write on a worksheet. You'd have to see it to understand. Anyway, on Thursday and Friday and using the E-board, I had the chance to maneuver throughout the classroom which really helped become more comfortable.

Okay, I think I am done talking about school. I need to go play some First In Math and start beating my 2nd period students before they run up the score!