All of the courses I taught took place via Google Meets for the duration of my practicum. All the classes met only twice per week, for 70 minute blocks. Fridays were asynchronous work days, where no classes were scheduled, and teachers could not report to the school since it was the deep cleaning day for the facilities.

I started the first day of the school year teaching Algebra I. This was a freshman, college prep course with 23 students. This was scheduled for period 4, so they met as the first class on Tuesdays and Thursdays and this was my only section of the class. We started the year by covering some Algebraic basics in the expressions and functions unit. This focused on students’ skills with understanding variables, interpreting word problems and translating scenarios into mathematical expressions, and defining and identifying functions. The next unit was linear equations, and this is where students mainly focused on solving equations for missing variables in a variety of ways. Building on these skills students were then able to expand to learning the final unit I taught, linear and nonlinear functions. This unit focused on the graphing components of functions and how equations can be interpreted in many different ways.

The other course I student taught was Topics in Algebra and Geometry. Doherty requires students to pass Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II to earn their diploma. This class targets students that need extra support in Math, and they take this course as Juniors, after Geometry and before Algebra II. Due to the pandemic in the Spring, many of these students did not finish the Geometry content, so we started the year with that. The unique part of this class is that there is not a schedule or specific standards we need to meet during the year, but instead we get to choose the units and standards we think will help the students most. So we covered geometric topics like Pythagorean theorem, circle area and circumference, and volume of geometric shapes, as well as the Algebraic topic of graphing linear functions. We had three sections of this course, periods 2, 6, and 7; they were all relatively small classes with about 15-20 students. Throughout my practicum I picked up additional sections of this class.

Both these courses both had high proportions of students with IEP and 504 plans, and many English Language Learners. Most of the students accommodations were in relation to focus and executive functioning. Adapting to this through Zoom was difficult, as discreetly checking on students’ progress isn’t possible in a full class call. So instead, we prioritized offering a variety of assignment types and implemented a flexible grading policy for due dates. Different kinds of assignments included Edpuzzle videos with embedded questions, ALEKS worksheets and time goals, Screencastify explanation video assignments, and traditional worksheets. The goal of this was to increase interest, since students wouldn’t always be doing the same kind of work and to differentiate instruction so students could learn and show understanding in a variety of ways from listening, reading, writing and speaking. These methods were especially important for helping ELL students access information in a variety of ways. Additionally, directions and instructions were repeated often and clarified in a variety of language to help students understand the goals and expectations for each class.

I gave students many opportunities throughout lecture, during independent work time, and out of class to ask any questions. To help students stay on task during their independent work time, I made a "To-Do" lists of assignments each class, and kept Google Classroom updates with assignments due dates, as well as keeping the online gradebook up to date so students could always check for missing work and grade updates. We also avoided assigning every problem on long worksheets to prevent students from getting overwhelmed or losing motivation, and instead opted to assign a few problems on each sheet so assignments didn’t feel daunting. These techniques helped ensure all students were given fair accommodations in the virtual classroom.

My mentor also taught a Probability and Statistic course for period 1, and covered a Geometry class for the first month of the school year. These classes were honors level, and had different classroom environments and student response than the college prep classes I student taught.