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