Wrapping it up

And just like that, it’s all over. I student taught for 16 weeks. I lived in Chicago. I created wonderful relationships with my students, colleagues, and friends. I had an experience I never imagined having when starting IU. Choosing to student teach in Chicago Public Schools was one of the best decisions I have made, and I believe I’ve grown so much as an educator and as a person because of it.

The last time I blogged was about four weeks ago. In those four weeks, I did so much with my 2^nd graders. We moved on to creating large opinion writing pieces, learned how to identify text written in first person and third person, picked out key words from math word problems to see which operation we needed to use, and completed our science unit on balance and motion.

I was so glad to have a supportive cooperating teacher to guide me through this experience because there was so much to do and learn while teaching these 2^nd graders. She helped me find ways to deal with student behavior and classroom management strategies that worked for me, and she provided me with feedback on my lessons and interactions with the students. We got along really well throughout the eight weeks, and I know I will be keeping her as a resource in the future!

My students were awesome. They brought me so much joy every day and reminded me why I love to teach the little ones! Each one of them has so much potential to grow and do amazing things in the future. All of my students wanted to learn. They were motivated by many things to continue to make progress in each subject. I loved their creativity and enthusiasm to try new things, something that I feel gets lost as students get older. So many of my students’ parents were involved in their learning, which is something that I was so grateful for during my time with them. The parents were willing to work on anything at home, whether it was improving their child’s math skills or working on a behavior issue. Through this eight week experience, I’ve seen the need for parental involvement and how big of an impact it has on students and their progress in school.

I am so grateful for the teachers and staff that I worked with at Belding Elementary School. I was welcomed into the Belding family and was provided with support and guidance throughout my experience. Each teacher has something special to offer to the school and the students, which makes Belding such a great environment to work in.

The next step: Finding a job. I’ve been fortunate enough to have received an official offer from a school district in Indianapolis and an early offer from Chicago Public Schools. I’m still applying to many school districts near my hometown so I have more options. I’m keeping all of my options open because I have no idea where I’ll ultimately end up teaching, so wish me luck!

Thank you to all of my teachers at IU, the Global Gateway staff, my family and friends in Chicago and Bloomington, and all of you who read my blog throughout my 16-week experience! I appreciate all the love and support you gave me as I went through this important time in my teaching career!

Graduation is 3 days away! Four years at IU have gone by so fast!

In my element

I haven’t blogged in almost five weeks! I guess no news is good news…? Now that I’m officially in the swing of things in 2^nd grade, I feel like I’m so busy all the time! It’s a good kind of busy – planning read-aloud activities and arts and crafts projects, coming up with creative ways to engage students, and maintaining my own school work.

There’s a lot of work that goes into planning for a single day of school. In previous field experiences, I have only been responsible for teaching one or two lessons a day, so the planning and teaching process never seemed too bad. Even in my special education placement, I was only responsible for teaching math, so I focused solely on math lessons. In this 2^nd grade placement, I plan lessons for writing, handwriting, reading, social studies, science, and math. General education elementary educators teach all subjects, so I knew I would to have to do a lot more planning than I had previously done. This 2^nd grade placement has definitely shown me what to expect on a daily basis when I begin teaching full-time.

I am loving 2^nd grade! 2^nd graders are the perfect age group to work with. They know how to read but still need support in learning new strategies to become better readers. They can do basic math facts and are always looking for advanced ways to solve math problems. They can write sentences, but they are at the beginning stages of forming developed paragraphs and pieces of writing. They are independent but can be needy at times. My role as the teacher is to teach a lesson and then allow the students to work with concepts independently.

Classroom description

There are 25 students in my 2^nd grade classroom who are pretty advanced for their age. Most of them are already working on 3^rd or 4^th grade math which is awesome! My supervising teacher has been really supportive in transitioning me into the daily routines and listens to ideas I have for certain lessons or activities. I have learned so much from her about the need for specific routines to organization to dealing with various behaviors. Her classroom management is crazy good. The students automatically know what to do as soon as they step into the classroom in the morning. One strategy my teacher uses to help her with classroom management is her token economy system. The students receive pennies to put in their individual banks every morning. Whenever a student does not follow the rules, she takes a penny away from him or her. The students value their pennies and become motivated to “do the right thing” in order to keep all their pennies. At the end of the month, my teacher pulls out the classroom store where the students can purchase items with the money in their banks.

So what have I been up to?

Five weeks have flown by! I started my experience in 2^nd grade by observing my teacher and learning classroom routines.

Week one: I began reading interventions with six students during their reading stations. Each student is at a different reading level and needs assistance in a different area, such as fluency, comprehension, or vocabulary. Each student and I go through 15 minutes of interventions to focus on the specific area of need. It’s so great to see the students’ daily and weekly progress!

Week two: Handwriting and writing were the first subjects I took over completely. I teach a handwriting lesson once a week, which involves teaching the students how to properly write lowercase and uppercase letters. All of the students know how to write, but these handwriting lessons teach them to write neater. In writing, I started a new unit on teaching opinion writing. My teacher has never taught this unit, so we have been going through this together! I began by teaching the students about facts and opinions, and then focused solely on forming and expressing opinions.

Week three: Along with teaching handwriting and writing, I took on reading and social studies. There is no set social studies time, so the social studies lesson is embedded into reading. I am teaching Civil Rights through picture books and read-alouds. After I read a book to the whole class, we have a discussion about what we read (Rosa Parks, MLK Jr., Ruby Bridges, etc.). Then, the students complete an assignment individually that relates to the reading. This assignment asks them to incorporate ideas that we talked about in the class discussion and consists of an extension that helps me to see what the individual student learned.

Week four: I added on science during this week. Science is taught two to three times a week. The unit that I am teaching is “Balance and Motion,” so the students are learning about balancing different objects and the forces that come into play when these objects move. Last week, we created mobiles out of index cards and paper clips and figured out how to balance each side!

Week five: This past week, I took over math, which meant that I was officially teaching all of the subjects. The math lessons are short, 15-20 minute lessons that focus on specific skills such as adding multi-digit numbers, strategies for doing mental math, mean/median/mode, etc. Math is divided into stations, so once the lesson is taught, the students work on the skill with me in small groups and then work on it individually.

I have three more weeks in this placement and then it’s all done! It’s hard to believe that I’m almost done with my final semester in college and will soon have my own classroom. Graduation is in one month and one day!

Out-of-school activities

Here are some pictures of things I’ve done and places I’ve visited on the weekends. With only a few weekends left in Chicago, we’re trying to find time for everything!

Alexis and I visited the Chicago History Museum and the Field Museum

I was able to watch IU beat Northwestern in the Big Ten Tournament!

 

Some of my friends from Bloomington came to visit me, and we went to the Shedd Aquarium!

I was able to explore the city during St. Patrick's Day weekend and take a picture with the green river!

I visited Navy Pier at night!

Bekah, Alexis, Gabe, and I went on the Willis Tower Skydeck!

8 weeks down, 8 more to go!

I am officially HALFWAY done with my student teaching experience! This marks the end of my special education placement and the start of my general education placement. Thank you to all who have kept up with my experience and have provided your advice and support! Keeping this blog has really helped me to reflect on my teaching and interactions with students and teachers.

Things I’ve learned:

Take everything one day at a time. As a teacher, I like to plan anything and everything I can. In this placement, there were so many things that were beyond my control that I couldn’t prepare/plan ahead for. Flexibility is a word that I heard often from all the teachers. Not only did I have to be flexible with my students, but I also had to work around my cooperating teacher, the general education teachers, and, believe it or not, the weather. So many different circumstances changed my plans, and I couldn’t do anything about it.

Communication is essential. Future student teachers: don’t be afraid to voice your concerns and expectations about your placement to your cooperating teacher and your supervisor. By the time I shared my concerns and comments to my cooperating teacher, it was too late to change anything. It’s YOUR experience, so do what you have to do to make it worthwhile. I was glad to have an open line of communication with my supervisor because she gave me tons of advice on how to deal with the different situations that I was going through.

“Not everyone will like you.” A student told me this. And it’s so true. I worked with hormonal 8^th graders, so one day the students loved me and another day they would all turn against me. I was fortunate enough to keep a few relationships throughout my placement, and I started to create new ones closer to the end of my experience. I did my best to get to know my students on a personal level, but each student had to put in the same effort in order for the relationship to grow. It’s hard to find the balance between being a friend and being a teacher. I think this was especially hard for me in this placement because I felt like I could relate to my students in different ways since we were so close in age. I’ve never had this issue while working with younger students because I think there was a large enough age gap for them to take me seriously.

Teaching special education is tough work. While taking classes at IU, I knew that teaching special education would be mentally and physically draining. But actually experiencing it and going through it every day really proved that. It’s challenging, but rewarding. Progress is slow, but once the students understand something, and it sticks, it’s all worthwhile. I mentioned in a previous post that after six weeks of working with my students on plotting coordinate points, they were able to plot on their own. It takes a lot of patience to wait for this kind of progress, but it’s a great feeling when it happens.

Each day is a new day. No matter how tough my days got, I knew that each day was a fresh start with my students. I had to keep a positive attitude every day, because that influenced the way my students looked at me. I couldn’t let problems from the previous day affect my interactions with my students the next day. I had some pretty tough days and went through some tough situations with my teacher and students, but I couldn’t let that get to me. Every day depended on my attitude; if I wanted it to be a good day, I had to be positive.

I know that a lot of my blogs have pointed out the challenges I’ve had in my placement. To future student teachers: I promise it’s not as bad as it may sound. I had little victories every day that helped to make up for the not-so-good times. My only advice is making sure to keep an open mind and having a positive attitude. A lot of this experience depends on the way you look at it and what you want to make of it.

Next up: 2^nd grade general education (I had my first day today, and it was awesome… but I’ll share everything in the next post! I promise my posts will start to be positive... I can feel it!)

Service Learning Project Update

I can’t believe it’s already the end of the 7^th week of student teaching! Each week has gone by so fast, and by the end of next week, I’ll be done with my special education placement! There are many things I will miss about this placement, but there is so much more that I am looking forward to in my 2^nd grade general education placement. I’ve started helping out in the 2^nd grade classroom during my prep period, so I’m getting to know some of my students. It’s definitely a change from working with 8^th graders, but that’s to be expected!

Last week, the 6^th-8^th graders had a Valentine’s Day Dance after school on Friday. A lot of my 8^th graders wanted me to chaperone, so I decided to go! I went with another student teacher from Northeastern University, Kaitlyn, who I work with during first period. I was glad I went because it allowed the kids to see me outside of a student teacher role and to interact with me in a more relaxed way. The dance was something positive the kids had to look forward to all week. Kaitlyn and I did the “Cupid Shuffle” and the “Cha Cha Slide” with everyone there! It was a wonderful end to a very productive week.

I also got a valentine present... sorta. A couple weeks ago, a student and I had a small disagreement which led to a very unpleasant conversation that ended up with the student yelling at me and disrespecting me. It was a conversation that basically hurt any chance of me creating a relationship with her for the rest of my time in the placement. The next week, this student was experiencing cramps for the first time, and since my cooperating teacher is a guy, she turned to me to talk about it. As surprised as I was by her actions, I sat and talked with her for about ten minutes to help her talk through whatever she wanted. We shared a positive moment, and I was glad she took that step to talk to me. We've been getting along ever since, and we even joke around a bit! On Friday, she dropped off a small bag on my desk and told me that this was a valentine/thank-you/sorry present. She remembered that I'm Muslim from a conversation we had during the first week of school. She's Muslim as well, and she told her parents to find me a present that we could connect with. When I opened the bag, it was a small plaque with some Arabic words on it. It's not a normal valentine, but it is symbolic and something that she really didn't have to do. I was touched and was really happy for the rest of the day, because I felt that I had made some type of impact on one student, even if it happened just by talking to her.

Craft #1 – Paper Plate Crowns

Last week was the first week of my service learning project at the Neighborhood Boys and Girls Club, and it was really successful. I wasn’t sure how well the program had been marketed at the Club, but around 30 kids came and participated in my activity! Each kid made a paper plate crown that gave 6-8 facts about themselves. I introduced myself with my paper crown and told the kids to do the same with their crowns. It was so great to work with a younger group of kids again! Each of them was so creative and had awesome facts to share. I was surprised to see how many of the boys were interested in the activity! I’ve been trying to find crafts that appeal to both boys and girls, and this one worked out very well. After seeing the success of this activity, I know I will use it in my future classroom if I work with a younger age group!

**Shout-out to the Women's Philanthropy Council for providing me with the funding to make this arts and crafts program happen! We made physical valentines for them to show our thanks!

Craft #2 – Foam and Foil Superhero Shields

This week, I planned to teach the students the art of embossing using a cheap method: aluminum foil. Embossing is just a fancy word for making indents or raised surfaces in any material. I had done some embossing in elementary and middle school and thought it was fun, so I wanted to try it out with the kids at the Club. I asked the kids to draw a shape or the letter of their first name on a piece of cardstock. Then, we cut them out and taped them on a foam sheet. We covered the foam sheet with aluminum foil and used the ends of markers and pens to make indents into the aluminum foil. This worked out really well for the older kids, but was a difficult task for the younger ones to complete on their own. I ended up modifying the craft for the younger kids to draw patterns and color on the aluminum foil to decorate their shield. Both the girls and the boys loved this craft and were very creative with their designs.

Next week, I’m hoping to work with paints and canvases, so I plan to have a smaller group of older kids. I’m really looking forward to it!

Working at the Neighborhood Boys and Girls Club is so much fun. I like being able to work with kids that are younger than the age of 13! They’re so lively and talkative!

While I’m doing my arts and crafts, Gabe interviews kids for his sports radio talk show. This is the link to his 2^nd podcast with them: https://m.soundcloud.com/kids-know-sports/episode-2. They actually know a lot about Chicago sports and have a lot to say! Check it out!

HAPPY POST!

I want to celebrate some happy moments that I shared with my students today. We were supposed to go on a field trip to Lane Tech High School to watch a production of “Footloose;” however, Lane Tech cancelled on us last night, so we had a regular day of school. In math, the students continued practicing slope and worked with y=mx+b. They’re starting to understand how to plug in numbers for x and y and how to solve for each letter in the equation. They plugged in different numbers to find coordinate points and then had to plot them. ALMOST ALL OF THEM COULD PLOT THE POINTS WITHOUT ANY HELP! I told my students I was so proud of them and that they made me so happy today because they were finally plotting correctly! This was the topic I taught them a few weeks ago, and they showed me they learned it today! Even though the past few weeks have been difficult for me, I forgot all of it this morning after watching them plot the points without complaining or getting frustrated. It was a really great feeling to see them SMILE while working on these problems. They were on fire today, and I could see their confidence building all period.

The second moment I shared was in the middle of the day. We left math on a great note with all the students smiling and laughing at me for being so excited. “Did you drink coffee this morning, Ms. Lalani, because you’re reallllly happy…?” (I did not drink coffee. I had milk, which they laughed at when I told them that.) They worked really well throughout the day in all the other subjects, and they also worked really well with me. Two of the girls came up to me and asked me if I was going to chaperone at the Valentine’s Day Dance this Friday. I wasn’t planning on chaperoning, but I asked them if they wanted me there. They both jumped up and down and said yes with huge smiles on their faces. … so I guess I’m chaperoning on Friday!

Today was one of those days that just happened to go smoothly. Everyone was in a good mood. No one fought. No one threw a temper tantrum. No one talked back to me or my cooperating teacher. 8^th graders are seriously so temperamental. If I’ve learned anything from this placement, it’s that I should always expect to have a brand new day with my students. These students surprise me every day, and even though I’ve had a tough few weeks, today really made it all worth it. 

On the bright side...

Done with Week 5!

This week was a lot different than the past four weeks. I’m quite relaxed… and in a better mood than usual! Let’s get you updated.

The nine students that I work with have become more and more unresponsive to me. They haven’t been respecting me as a teacher, and their behavior with me has become worse. My cooperating teacher noticed this, so he decided to give me a break from teaching math in the resource room every day. When I found this out, I was a little upset; I was just getting used to lesson planning and had figured out where I wanted to go with this slope unit. From now on, instead of leading math lessons, I will be responsible for four periods of inclusion work. This means that I will need to communicate with the general education teachers and modify their assignments and assessments for my nine students in reading, social studies, and science. I spoke with my supervisor, who was a principal at CPS for a really long time, and she said that this is an important aspect of my student teaching experience. If I choose to accept a special education position in Chicago, more than likely, I will have to modify general education teachers’ lesson plans for the special education students that I will be working with. There are very few schools that have special education teachers who ONLY work in a resource room; therefore, my supervisor thinks this experience will get me acquainted with co-teaching and modifications.

Week 5 was my first week trying this system out. It’s a very big responsibility to find time to speak with each general education teacher and understand their objectives for the week. I have to make sure that any modifications I make to assignments continue to meet the objectives set by the teachers. There is another student teacher, Ashleigh, who teaches reading to the 8^th graders. She wants to collaborate with me and involve me as much as possible while I’m in the reading classroom. We planned two lessons together, one on context clues and the other on main idea and summarizing. I taught the first half of both lessons and she taught the second half, which meant that we successfully co-taught lessons! I had so much fun teaching these two lessons to the 24 8^th graders in the reading room. They were so responsive, energetic, and creative throughout the lesson, which made it so much easier for me to teach them! The students respected me and listened to me when I wanted their attention, something that I haven’t been getting from my usual students. Ashleigh and I will continue to collaborate with each other for the rest of my placement. This coming week, we’re beginning Romeo and Juliet, a Shakespeare play that I haven’t read, so I’m pretty excited about that!

Update on my service learning project:

This Thursday will be the first day that Gabe and I begin our service learning projects at the Boys and Girls Club. I applied for a mini-grant from the Women’s Philanthropy Council through the Global Gateway program at IU to help fund my arts and crafts program, and it was approved today! I now have some money to buy supplies for the activities that I’ve planned for my participants! Gabe and I are really excited to start these projects. Like I said in my previous post, this program will be a great way for me to relax and do something I love!

Gabe is doing a sports radio broadcast for his program. He’ll be interviewing some of the kids at the club about their views on Chicago sports. His conversations will be posted on this website: https://soundcloud.com/kids-know-sports Make sure to check it out whenever you can! I’m sure he’ll have some pretty awesome conversations!

Nice things kids said to me this week:

~ 6^th grader that I work with for one period – “Wow. You work with 8^th graders? They’re lucky to have you. You’re so much fun in our class!”

~ 8^th grader that’s on and off with me – “I know we give you a hard time. We do it to all the student teachers. But I like you, and I wanted to say thank you for helping me. You’re nice.”

It’s the little things these students say to me that make my days better. J

I’m looking forward to the next three weeks of this placement. Things have been all over the place these past few weeks with my students and my placement in general, but there’s always a bright side to everything. I’m focusing on the positives, and I’m continuing to reflect on my experience every day!

Side note:

Those of you who know me really well know that I love Jimmy Fallon and his work on the Tonight Show. Last week, he did a segment that reunited the cast of the 90s TV show, “Saved by the Bell.” Hey wait. My blog title… Saved by the Bel(ding)… Ok, I tried to make a connection. Well, I watched the video and it was great. Here’s a link to it just in case you haven’t seen it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MftOONlDQac

Ups and Downs

This week marked the 4^th week of my special education placement… I’m halfway done with this placement and will be transitioning into 2^nd grade so soon! The time has flown by! I took this week to look back on the positive experiences and the challenges that I have gone through during the past few weeks, both inside and outside of the classroom. I have been keeping a journal, aside from this blog, to reflect and process my student teaching experience.

I’ve gone through a range of emotions these past four weeks, and the only way to work through them, I think, is by reflecting and coming up with ways to change things I don’t like and continuing with things that I think are working for me.

Positives

Challenges

·         Being welcomed into a new school and community – Everyone has been friendly, supportive, and accommodating to my needs as a student teacher. ·         Building rapport – I’m getting to know my students on a personal level, which I mentioned in my previous posts. I try to find connections between us to relate to them better. Listening to them talk and paying attention to the little things has worked in my favor because it shows them that I care. ·         Creating my own material – Since the students are learning material a little below their grade level, I don’t have curriculum books to look at and to copy material from. The workbooks that the students have are very advanced and need to be modified. Through this experience, I’m learning to find and use reliable math websites to create my own, modified teaching material for my students. This skill will definitely be useful for when I have my own classroom and need to supplement the general curriculum. ·         Learning about the logistics of being a teacher – I have attended team meetings with the school principal and a special education referral meeting. Both meetings have shown me the side of teaching that I’ve only heard about in classes. There is a lot more that a teacher is responsible for besides physically teaching students in the classroom. It’s amazing to see how much the 7th/8th grade teachers care for their students and work together to ensure each individual student’s success in all subjects. ·         Importance of team teaching – There are four team teachers in 7th/8th grade that teach their respective subjects. They are constantly communicating together to make sure that everyone is on the same page about lessons and certain students (regarding behavior or classwork). There is so much trust and openness among these teachers that it makes me look forward to the group of teachers that I will eventually work with when I become a teacher. ·         Friendships – I’ve gotten closer to my roommate, Alexis, and my walking buddy, Gabe. We’re having a great time living on our own and exploring the city together. Alexis makes me laugh everyday no matter how tough our days are, and Gabe is there for me to bounce off ideas for lessons with my 8th graders. He’s also a trivia whiz, so I’m learning some new things from him as well!

·         8th grade vs. another elementary grade – The biggest challenge that I face every day is teaching 8th graders. Prior to my first day of student teaching, I was under the impression that I’d be working with 4th-7th graders. 8th grade special ed is a very different territory than what I’m used to. Though it is a challenge, working with 8th graders has taught me a lot about myself that I probably would not have learned if I had been with another age group. ·         Student behavior – I probably mention this in all of my posts. Dealing with student behavior, especially in 8th grade, is tough. I’m not used to students talking back or yelling at me. I get flustered on the spot and need a few seconds to collect myself, but those few seconds are all it takes for the students to become out of control. I think this is a challenge for me because I met these students in the middle of the year. If I began the year with them by setting my own expectations and practicing those expectations, I would have less of an issue with these behaviors or would not have these behaviors at all. This just reinforces the need to set and teach reasonable expectations to students during the first few weeks of school. ·         Finding the line between being a friend and being the teacher – This is a struggle that I face a lot. While building relationships with my students is important, I need to make sure that they see me as a teacher before they see me as a friend. It’s my personality to want to be nice to them and to listen to them. But finding that balance is a continuous challenge that I hope to improve on throughout the next few weeks. ·         Students taking me seriously – I look like an 8th grader. I’m shorter than most of them. This becomes a physical challenge to get students to take me seriously and to think of me as a teacher. There’s nothing I can do about this challenge, really, except maintaining assertiveness and being confident in my teaching. Hopefully, this isn’t an issue when I’m working with the younger kids!

 Fun things that happened this week:

·         It was Twin Day at Belding! The students paid $1 to dress up as a twin with someone else for the day. Ashleigh and I dressed up as twins, too!

·         I was scorekeeper at Belding’s annual Geography Bee! Some of those questions were pretty difficult! I really enjoy getting involved in Belding events because it allows me to see the talent of the students in all the grades.

·         I’m starting my Service Learning Project in a couple weeks. As a participant of the Urban Program, I’m required to do a service project that allows me to meet local community members while giving back to the community. My plan is to start an arts and crafts program at the local Boys and Girls Club. I’m really excited to begin this program because it will be a change of scenery – arts and crafts and working with a younger age group – for six to seven weeks.

·         Alexis and I visited the Swedish American Museum. I learned more about Swedish immigration to the United States and the impact they made in Chicago in the late-1800s/early-1900s. Here are some fun facts I learned:

o   Family Bibles were considered to be family heirlooms. They were used to record family history that could be handed down from generation to generation. The one on display was 22 pounds!

o   Brudkrona = bridal crown – Swedish brides wore the bridal crown on their wedding day to symbolize purity and to feel like royalty on their special day.

o   Famous Swedes: Buzz Aldrin (walked on the moon), Alfred Nobel (founder of the Nobel Prize), Walgreens, Nordstrom, the builders of the Wrigley building and Wrigley Field (a connection to my sister who works for Wrigley!), and the builders of the structural framework for the Baha’i Temple in Wilmette, IL.

·         Chicago was hit with 19 inches of snow, so we had our 3^rd snow day of the semester!

Shout-out to my support system for helping me talk through my emotions this past month:

Thanks for brightening my day with phone calls, texts, FaceTime/Skype conversations, and emails!

Time for some positivity

Since my last post, I have received many texts, messages, and emails from my friends, teachers, and followers/readers. They encouraged me to stay positive and to continue to prepare myself to be a strong teacher. All of the experiences, feelings, and relationships I have while student teaching will allow me to grow into the teacher I want to become. I am really appreciative of the support and encouragement I receive on a daily basis! It’s a great feeling to know that people are following my journey and are helping me get through it in one piece! J

This week was pretty eventful! We had a day off on Monday due to Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so Gabe and I decided to take advantage of it and went exploring! I had my first experience going on the ‘L’ train which took us toward all the museums downtown. Since we’re (student) teachers, we get free admission to many museums, cultural centers, and other attractions! Gabe and I went to the Field Museum and spent around 3 hours learning about dinosaurs, Native American culture, Egyptians and mummies, genetics, and plants and animals (alive and extinct). We both learned a lot of new things and were so fascinated by the amount of living things that existed and still exist in the world!

Teaching this week went a lot better than last week. I introduced the topic of reflection on coordinate planes, and the students seemed to enjoy it! It was something they had never been exposed to, so since it was different, they paid more attention to it and stayed engaged. They also thought it was challenging, but we spent a full week working on it, making sure they understood it completely. On Friday, I was able to do a fun activity where I created a life-size coordinate plane and had the students plot points by walking along the plane. They were resistant at first because they don’t like changes in their routine, but after the first round of plotting, they had higher spirits! I have spent two weeks teaching plotting, translating (moving), and reflecting points, so next week I will be testing them on this information. It’ll be my first experience creating a test that shows me how much they have actually retained and if they are able to perform these tasks on their own.

On Thursday, we had our first JUSTICE session. If you don’t remember what that is from one of my earlier blog posts, JUSTICE stands for “Joining Urban Student Teachers to Integrate Community Experiences.” These are sessions that the six of us in the Urban Program participate in to discuss our experiences in our placements, as well as to learn more about urban education. This week’s topic was “First Impressions and Assets and Deficits.” We shared our impressions of Albany Park and the schools we are teaching in and discussed any stereotypes we were able to get rid of after spending three weeks here. Our discussion was awesome because the six of us teach in three schools with different populations of students and different types of classrooms, so we all had something new to bring to the conversation.

At the end of the week, Gabe, Alexis, and I went to Bellona’s Pizza, a small, family-owned pizza place that specializes in Chicago-style pizza. It was so good! We agree that “hole-in-the-wall” places in our neighborhood serve the best kind of food. The prices are reasonable and the food is tasty, so we enjoy exploring different places around us!

Today, Alexis, Gabe, Bekah, and I spent our time at the Adler Planetarium! Again, we were able to get in for free because we’re teachers… oh, the perks of being an educator! ;) Our goal is to visit one museum or cultural center every weekend. Chicago has some awesome resources, so why not take advantage of them while we’re here!?

Overcoming challenges

I’ve heard from practicing teachers that the semester or year-long student teaching experience we all have to go through is one of the toughest years of teaching. With only two weeks of student teaching completed, I shouldn’t be able to agree with this… but I agree. This past week was a challenge for me, emotionally and physically. In my last post, I mentioned that I would be teaching my first math lesson on coordinate points. My teacher had me plan lessons for three days, Wednesday-Friday, encouraging me to keep everything flexible. This is how each day went:

Day 1: Introduction to Coordinate Points

I was pretty excited going into this lesson. My teacher gave me a general idea of what the students knew about coordinate points: They’ve touched the topic before. They’ll tell me they know it and will ask for something harder, but really, they don’t know what to do. Going in with this mindset, I planned my lesson around creating a “Quadrant Foldable,” a visual aid containing all the basic information about plotting coordinate points that the students could use as a study guide or reference.

As soon as I began the lesson, the students began complaining, “We’ve learned this already, this is so boring.” My teacher warned me about this, so I was a little prepared for their reactions. I knew that this lesson was important, and I had to make sure they actually understood what they were doing. When I asked them to plot a point, maybe two of the nine students could do it correctly. We started working on the foldable and one of the girls asked, “Do we really have to do this? This is stupid.” It was really upsetting to hear that because I thought that creating the foldable would be something new and different from what they’re used to. Their motivation was low, but they went along with it and finished their foldables. By the end of the lesson, the students still needed assistance with plotting points. When my teacher told me to be flexible with my lessons, he really meant it, because even after spending 50 minutes teaching them to plot, I had to modify my second lesson to review plotting and then move onto the next topic.

Day 2: Review and Movement of Points

We began the lesson by reviewing plotting with a warm-up worksheet. The students complained a lot more than the previous day. One girl told me to my face that she hated me. Another girl said she wanted her math teacher from last year to teach her. A boy said he thought this stuff was stupid. All of this happened within the first ten minutes of class. I was so thrown-off, that I didn’t know how to respond. That’s when my teacher had to step in and yell at the students, telling them that they needed to treat me with respect and treat me like a real teacher. At that point, I was losing my confidence in taking over the class. My teacher took one of the students outside of the classroom to discuss her behavior… this gave two other students the perfect opportunity to start a fight. Both students were yelling and swearing at each other. Another student teacher and I had to break it up and separate them.

That entire class period, I felt like nothing was going right. I lost control of the class, the students were talking back, and I almost didn’t get the lesson finished. My teacher debriefed my lesson with me and told me not to be disheartened. He said that the students were trying to test me the past couple of days to see how far they could push me before I gave into them. He explained to me that I had to be tougher, and I couldn’t be afraid to raise my voice at them. I couldn’t show them that they were getting to me, because once I did that, I would lose the class for the rest of my time with them.

I left school that day feeling so defeated. I was stressed and disappointed in myself for not being able to manage the class. I was so grateful for my family and Alexis that night because they helped me to stay positive and gave me ideas on how to react in different situations that came up in the classroom. They motivated me to think about the positive experiences I had with the students from last week and the progress I had already made outside of the classroom.

Day 3: Movement of Points and Creating Shapes

My teacher took the day off, so I was put to the test right away! I put my “teacher-face” on as soon as I stepped into the classroom. Surprisingly, the students worked really well together, and we went through the entire period without anyone disrespecting me. One of the students tried to get me to cut class short so that he could study for a science quiz, but I stood my ground and said that I wouldn’t do that since my lesson required the full 50 minutes and that studying was meant to be done outside of class. He definitely didn’t like that, but I could see that he knew I was right. It’s safe to say that I walked out of that period smiling because it went a lot better than the previous day.

Remember Sarah from a couple posts ago? She didn’t like me very much from the beginning… Sarah told me in front of everyone in the class that she actually liked me! I was speechless for a few seconds, but I couldn’t help myself, so I said, “Are you kidding me?! You hated me from the minute I walked in!” Sarah shrugged, and said, “You’ve grown on me. I don’t mind you anymore.” We had a moment there, and we both ended up laughing. She even came to me at the end of the day and asked me to sit with her during her advisory period (which is usually my prep period), so I agreed! I’m taking any chance I get to connect with my students!

The end of this day went really well. Gabe and I helped to judge the school-wide spelling bee with one of the other student teachers! I’m really feeling like I’m part of the school community, and I can’t wait to see what other opportunities I have to get involved at Belding!

This past week was a challenge, but I know that these experiences will help me to become a stronger teacher. In my sister’s words: “If you can survive teaching 8^th graders at CPS, you can survive teaching any other grade.” I’m continuing this experience with an open mind and want to see how I can make myself a better, more effective teacher. I’m hoping that this week goes smoothly, but I’m taking it one day at a time.