The First Week: "Trial by Fire"
The very first week of student teaching at my middle school placement was fraught with altered schedules and impromptu physical fights in the hallways. While this should have scared me enough to request a change of major, I am extremely glad I stuck it out. Unfortunately for my boyfriend, this meant he had to listen to me babble nonstop on the phone every night about what had occurred that day in school. The first week was incredibly enlightening though. I was able to see how my co-op handled stress and the chaos of unexpected changes. This week my co-op and I also began the process of figuring out what I would be teaching and when. With her, I began to construct a general outline of what my 3-4 weeks of teaching would look like. I also began to consider how I would implement my ISLP...this was considerably more challenging :)The Second Week: "The Takeover"
This week was the beginning of my takeover of English classes. Over the course of the week I picked up a class each day starting with period nine and working my way up to the earlier classes. My co-op and I chose to do it this way so that I could spend the earlier periods observing her and how she taught the day's lesson. This method worked extremely well and I was able to begin learning the students' names and how the school day functioned in a comfortable fashion. My co-op also allowed me to teach a few mini-lessons in our classes. The students seemed to respond well to this and it made me hopeful for the following week when I would be teaching every class with my own lesson plans. When I wasn't teaching during these days, I was conducting observations for both my teaching portfolio and for my ISLP. With all of that going on, this week was just as chaotic as my first week. I don't think we had a single planning period due to all of the coverages and parent conferences we were responsible for. my co-op actually apologized emphatically at the end of the week for how abnormal the last two weeks were. I just laughed it off, because at that point it was just the norm for me. I look forward to each new day because I never know what is going to happen that day. I think this is a partly what drew me to the teaching profession anyway; I do not want the monotonous routine of the same thing every day.
The Third Week: "Total Control"
This past week, the third week of my student teaching, was the first week I began implementing my own lessons every day. Monday, the very first day, also happened to be the first observation by Dr. Shannon. I was feeling fairly confident in what I had planned for the entire week and was grading papers in my planning period when I suddenly received a text. It was from Dr. Shannon, and she was informing me that she was on her way over to the school now. I went into panic because if she was on her way that moment that meant she was going to observe 6th period instead of 8th period. This may not sound like much to whomever is reading this, but if you know my classes you know that 6th period is my most challenging class. So after I got Dr. Shannon's text I began to panic. I mean, I was already pretty nervous about teaching my own lessons, teaching all of the classes, AND having Dr. Shannon observe....and then I find out she's on her way to see 6th period. I reasoned with myself, however, thinking that both first and second period had already gone extremely well. What could go wrong with teaching it again? Hah. Haha. So, the lesson went well....until I ran out of planned content fifteen minutes before the end of class. I looked back at my co-op who was observing the lesson too and she just had a curious look on her face. I'm fairly sure she also realized how much time remained in the period. Thinking quickly, I just continued with what would be the logical next step for the students in the lesson. As a class, we verbally brainstormed and outlined how we could argue/persuade our administration to not force school uniforms. It worked fairly well, and interestingly enough, in our meeting after Dr. Shannon said she wouldn't have even noticed if I didn't mention it. I enjoyed hearing what Dr. Shannon had to say about everything in our meeting after class. She had many suggestions for how I could improve, and I am grateful for those. I realize how far I have yet to go, but I'm still extremely pleased with the progress I have made thus far. I was the most intrigued to read the 3 pages of observation notes Dr. Shannon sent me the next day. It was really fascinating to see the minute-by-minute break down of how she saw the lesson from the back. Beyond the observation on Monday, the rest of the week went swimmingly. My co-op was out of Tuesday and Friday. I really enjoyed these two days because my students seemed to give me more respect and authority. The best part of this was when she was out on Tuesday, they had other teachers from the building come and do coverages rather than hiring a sub for the day. It was neat to get feedback from each teacher [three of which were English teachers from other grades] who observed. Even better, the next day my co-op hear from almost every teacher who had coverage in there, and they all had great things to say about my lesson and teaching! It was really gratifying.