Week 3

This week has been a whirl wind! I'm happy, overwhelmed, excited, but stressed, and so many more emotions after this week.

Monday was MLK day and the students had no school, but the staff had an in-service day. This was fun to be apart of because I was able to experience what the life of a teacher is like on the "days off". We began the day with staff devotions, prayer, and worship. What a privilege we have to do this together! Another thing we did was a "tuning" exercise. We were split up into groups and had to tell our group an issue or problem we are having in the classroom or with our students. After this, the other staff members brainstormed ways to help you solve this issue or implement whatever you were having troubles with. I loved this experience, it showed true collaboration and the ideas and suggestions were fabulous!

My course load this week was basically full time. I taught everything but one mathematics class. This was a good experience, but it made for a stressful week. Early mornings and late nights were to be had by Ms. Disselkoen this week!

The students are becoming very used to me... why do I say that? They are comfortable enough now to test me. I had some challenging moments that exhausted me and sometimes discouraged me, but overall pushed me and helped me grow as an educator and overall person. One particular moment I would like to never forget was when one student decided to throw a paper airplane in class. I caught it in midair, crinkled it, and threw it in the crash. The old Ms. Disselkoen would think this would over the top and terribly mean, but one thing I learned this week is some of these students come from some tough homes and they need and really only respond to tough love. I had some good talks about how to best handle situations where students are getting up in class, being disrespectful, and not caring about work with my cooperating teacher and I have found that the most important thing for me to do is stop, address the issue, be firm, and show my students tough love. They have responded positively to this, and I feel as though throughout the week I have gained their respect and bad behaviors have begun to clear up.

"Good days, bad days, you cannot let them affect the way you view yourself as a teacher." -Cooperating teacher

As far as my actually teaching went....I am happy and so excited. I have so much fun teaching 6th graders. I can play games, come up with silly scenarios, ask goofy questions, and make funny voices for characters in a book and they love it! Teaching is a blast and I love getting up each morning knowing I get to hang out with these students and teach.

I tried something new this week. My cooperating teacher is VERY loud and he can yell and get their attention, but this strategy does NOT work for me. I had to come up with a way to get students attention when I wanted to talk and have the room be quite. I began using a call and response. I say, "Class, class" the students say "Yes, yes". It works WONDERS for me! I have used this in some of my younger grades I have taught, so I was hesitant at first to try it, but it has worked all week and they picked up on it quickly. It has made noise level and transitions much smoother for me.

I will be continuing to teach both Bible classes, both Social Studies classes, and Reading next week. We are going to wait to add Math class to my load for one more week since they fell behind in their math lessons due to no school on Monday and other events throughout the week. As I go forward into next week I hope to try a few more things.

1. Take over morning devotions and prayer.
2. Practice getting my students moving more during lessons.
3. Doing a better job at transitions from beginning of classes to the end of classes.