Hello all.
Like Ellen said, I can't believe that our second week is over! The week few by and I can't believe how much I have grown as a teacher in only a week.
Some things that I learned this week were WAIT-TIME. I'm not good at it - I'm not patient! I also learned how to respond to students who answer a question wrong. It's hard for me to take an answer that is wrong and turn it into a good answer. But it's important for 7th graders to know that they were sorta-right instead of saying "no, that's a horrible answer."
I had the opportunity to experience a team meeting that involved parents and psychologists this week. In my "team" there is a student (I'll call him Bob) who has been having a lot of difficulty. He has a learning disorder and he has behavioral issues. However, last Friday, his behaviors began to escalade to childish - "Well, Jill got to go and I don't get to go but she did. It's not fair!" and to mean - he began to bully those around him. Then on Monday, my first day of teaching, he had an inch wide about five inches long cut on both sides of his wrist. And he was taking his eraser and digging it open and spreading the blood on his paper. Let me take a moment and talk about myself -ON MY FIRST DAY OF TEACHING. Thank God that Mrs. Riddlemoser was in the room! Ok, back to Bob, so, my co-op called a team meeting about it where it was decided to bring in the parents. Well, the mother is a single mother who is just fed up with Bob's attitude and problems because she has two other kids at home. And the psychologist seemed to have nothing to say and the social work who comes to the house twice a week said, "Well, he just sits in the basement and plays games all night."
This child is screaming for attention - and no one wants to help him. In my last post I talked about PSSA nonsense and now I'm, again, talking about how the system isn't helping students. This is how the meeting went:
Person 1 - Well, I would like to help him but I'm not allowed to use such-and-such a paper to write him up.
Person 2 - It would be nice to help him but it's not inside my 4-walls.
Person 3 - I could see him being the kid who brings a gun to school but I don't know what his problem is.
Person 4 - I think we need to identify his problems before we begin to help him.
Person 5 - I don't care what his problems are as long as I have a plan to help him.
Person 2 - Well, Person 4 has the authority to blah-blah.
Person 4 - Not really, that would go to Person 6 (not present at the meeting).
Person 3 - Well Person 6 doesn't really care that much.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!?!?
I was two seconds away from pulling out my hair! Right now I would much rather be talking about LFS lesson plans and what a great time I'm having being a student teacher - but this is all I hear all day! These kids need help and no one will help them!
Ok, I'm sorry for my ranting - it's just so upsetting and annoying!
Seriously though, on the teacher side of it, I have grown two billion times over as a teacher this week. On Friday, Mrs. Riddlemoser was sick so I had all of the classes solely to myself and it went really well! It was a great way to end the week.
:)
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Blog #1
Hello all.
First, I'll begin with my school and district. Gettysburg Middle School is a suburban school with about 300 students per class. The middle school is extremely LFS focused and houses sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. I’m student teaching at the 7th grade level. GMS has divided their teachers into “teams” with one teacher from each subject in each team. Teams are responsible for the students in their team. Although, this isn’t a fool-proof plan because some students get mixed into other teams. I think that the teams don’t create a sense of community with the teachers because teams do not work with other teams. There is a sense of “that’s not my problem because it’s not my team.”
My co-op is Jenn Riddlemoser. She is an effective teacher and the students respect her. Her teaching is different from mine because she uses a lot of group work and usually she has students work on their own pace to get a list of activities done. Whereas I enjoy being in front of the class and having everyone work together.
I have one “academic” class (block) and one “regular” block every day. I will be beginning a poetry unit on Monday – with a ton of PSSA prep involved. It has been very difficult trying to interpret poems and find a way to link them to PSSA preps. Anyway, more about planning later… The students in the academic class are slackers. They love to read (which is great) but they are non-responsive in class because they know they can get away with doing nothing. The “regular” classes are very well behaved and I believe they are bored with their classes (all classes). Mrs. Riddlemoser’s class is complete routine (I think routine is important but does get boring after awhile – you can only eat a turkey sandwich for lunch so many times). There are some “bad” kids = the ones who don’t care but they are well behaved!! They just like to get off topic! I find myself drawn to these kids (which doesn’t surprise me because I’ve always enjoyed working with the students labeled as “challenged” or “academically incompetent”).
The other class is a 50 minute exploratory class which is 10-12 students who didn’t score well on their pre-PSSA tests. It is a read-aloud class where Mrs. Riddlemoser reads aloud (“Chasing Redbird”) and prompts the students to predict, find synonyms, or learn new vocabulary. This class isn’t taught with an Essential Question or Unit Plan; the major point is to make it through the novel while discussing. I will be teaching the new novel when they are done with “Chasing Redbird” (hopefully in a week). I will start “The Hunger Games.” I haven’t read it yet. Has anyone heard of it?
Overall, I’m beginning to enjoy all of the students as I get to know their different learning styles. This week I’ve been mostly observing, lesson planning, grading, and spelling every word in the dictionary; “Miss Sheaffer, do you know how to spell ____?!”
Mrs. Riddlemoser recently got new literature books that she hasn’t touched yet. So, I began to plan out of the book THEN the supplies arrived. So, to make my point, I will list all of the supplies for this text book: 35 textbooks, 100 full lesson plans for teachers (done in LFS style), 35 grammar workbooks that go with the texts, grammar answer keys, 35 worksheet books (complete with graphic organizers for each text), worksheet answer key books, cds with every text read out loud, cd with all of the lesson plans, cd with text generators for each unit, and PSSA prep books that follow the unit.
Seriously. Ser-i-ous-ly.
What is the point of going to college and wanting to be a teacher? A monkey could teach these students with these books and supplies!
And, while I’m complaining about the state system of education – I spent two hours grading PSSA preps for MATH because the students just took their 4-site test (PSSA preps). Ridiculous.
Anyway, that’s my ramblings for this week. And, although I ended on a negative note, I really do love my placement and all of the teachers and staff. (And the library – it’s amazing). I can’t wait to start teaching on Monday!
P.S. I created a page for my students, it is: www.riddlemoser.wikispaces.com. Feel free to drop by sometime!
First, I'll begin with my school and district. Gettysburg Middle School is a suburban school with about 300 students per class. The middle school is extremely LFS focused and houses sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. I’m student teaching at the 7th grade level. GMS has divided their teachers into “teams” with one teacher from each subject in each team. Teams are responsible for the students in their team. Although, this isn’t a fool-proof plan because some students get mixed into other teams. I think that the teams don’t create a sense of community with the teachers because teams do not work with other teams. There is a sense of “that’s not my problem because it’s not my team.”
My co-op is Jenn Riddlemoser. She is an effective teacher and the students respect her. Her teaching is different from mine because she uses a lot of group work and usually she has students work on their own pace to get a list of activities done. Whereas I enjoy being in front of the class and having everyone work together.
I have one “academic” class (block) and one “regular” block every day. I will be beginning a poetry unit on Monday – with a ton of PSSA prep involved. It has been very difficult trying to interpret poems and find a way to link them to PSSA preps. Anyway, more about planning later… The students in the academic class are slackers. They love to read (which is great) but they are non-responsive in class because they know they can get away with doing nothing. The “regular” classes are very well behaved and I believe they are bored with their classes (all classes). Mrs. Riddlemoser’s class is complete routine (I think routine is important but does get boring after awhile – you can only eat a turkey sandwich for lunch so many times). There are some “bad” kids = the ones who don’t care but they are well behaved!! They just like to get off topic! I find myself drawn to these kids (which doesn’t surprise me because I’ve always enjoyed working with the students labeled as “challenged” or “academically incompetent”).
The other class is a 50 minute exploratory class which is 10-12 students who didn’t score well on their pre-PSSA tests. It is a read-aloud class where Mrs. Riddlemoser reads aloud (“Chasing Redbird”) and prompts the students to predict, find synonyms, or learn new vocabulary. This class isn’t taught with an Essential Question or Unit Plan; the major point is to make it through the novel while discussing. I will be teaching the new novel when they are done with “Chasing Redbird” (hopefully in a week). I will start “The Hunger Games.” I haven’t read it yet. Has anyone heard of it?
Overall, I’m beginning to enjoy all of the students as I get to know their different learning styles. This week I’ve been mostly observing, lesson planning, grading, and spelling every word in the dictionary; “Miss Sheaffer, do you know how to spell ____?!”
Mrs. Riddlemoser recently got new literature books that she hasn’t touched yet. So, I began to plan out of the book THEN the supplies arrived. So, to make my point, I will list all of the supplies for this text book: 35 textbooks, 100 full lesson plans for teachers (done in LFS style), 35 grammar workbooks that go with the texts, grammar answer keys, 35 worksheet books (complete with graphic organizers for each text), worksheet answer key books, cds with every text read out loud, cd with all of the lesson plans, cd with text generators for each unit, and PSSA prep books that follow the unit.
Seriously. Ser-i-ous-ly.
What is the point of going to college and wanting to be a teacher? A monkey could teach these students with these books and supplies!
And, while I’m complaining about the state system of education – I spent two hours grading PSSA preps for MATH because the students just took their 4-site test (PSSA preps). Ridiculous.
Anyway, that’s my ramblings for this week. And, although I ended on a negative note, I really do love my placement and all of the teachers and staff. (And the library – it’s amazing). I can’t wait to start teaching on Monday!
P.S. I created a page for my students, it is: www.riddlemoser.wikispaces.com. Feel free to drop by sometime!
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