Week 4
Upon arrival I was introduced to the students in both of my classes. The first day we played games so I could get a feel of the environment and how she connects with students. My mentor teacher explained to me she thinks games are a good way to pick up on how her students interact with each other and pick up on what type of person they are (if they are outgoing or more reserved if they are comfortable being in front of the class, if they are competitive or if they aren't). Getting to be introduced to them in this environment made it feel so much more relaxed and was much less stressful than being introduced and then going immediately into a lesson.
The class felt relaxed and she explained that they were doing the game day for me but also because the unit they're in required them to listen to a podcast for forty-five minutes every day instead of interacting or having fun. This was a brain break in a sense.
I liked the way she set this up because it allowed me to kind of seamlessly meld into the class in a way instead of just awkwardly sitting there and watching them learn/sitting in silence. I think doing that would have made me feel a lot more anxious. I was kind of subtly introduced and then the next day my mentor had me fully introduce myself and then the students went around and introduced themselves as well.
Week 5
For this entire week we sat quietly and listened to the podcast from their current unit. It is the Serial podcast about Adnan Syed and his murder trial. I've listened to this same podcast before in my own high school English class so it was interesting to kind of see the difference in how it is taught and what she focused on compared to what my high school teacher did.
Depending on the day and the content of the podcast my mentor teacher and I would sit and talk about her career and history with the school, who is who, how the school operates, and I'd ask questions pulled from my methods course. Originally, I was confused about coming into it during a podcast because we were just listening to the podcast for the full class time; however, as time went on I became more and more grateful that this is the unit I came into because I was able to get to know my mentor much better and I felt so much more comfortable with the environment/less self-conscious about my place in the classroom.
So far it has been much different than my experience with my mentor teacher last semester and I feel much more confident with myself and my teacher identity at this point. I feel like this school environment is also much better suited for me.
Week 6
My mentor teacher asked me to help her teach a lesson this week so we could knock out one of the co-teaching aspects and get me more comfortable standing in front of the class.
She handed out sheets of paper to the students each student got two sheets. They got one green sheet and one yellow sheet and I had written words on them. I'd hold up one green and one yellow paper and on one there would be a word with a positive connotation "outgoing" and on the other a negative connotation, "talkative." I'd hold these up and the students would hold up the color paper they would rather be. If they'd rather be "outgoing" and outgoing is written on a green paper, then the students would hold up the green paper. I'd get a general vibe from the class and ask a few students why they chose what they chose, especially if it was a word that had a negative connotation.
I think this was such a good way to integrate me into the class as a "teacher" to them. I started off the lesson for the first 10 minutes and then my mentor took over what she had decided to do with the connotation points. I had a bit of anxiety going into it but it overall felt very natural and fun to do. The students interacting with it was something I was nervous about but everyone did and if I didn't ask enough questions or a specific one that my mentor had planned then she would step in for a second and ask.
I had a lot of anxiety going into this because last semester when we taught it was divided up into two other people and either we went into small groups or we each took a section so if I struggled/didn't explain well I could rely on them to make up for it in their teaching segment. It was nerve-racking to be by myself in front of students I barely
Week 7
This week my mentor gave me her binder full of her plans and assignments for the next unit which will be a unit on Shakespeare's Macbeth. I spent almost every class reading through the play and looking at the translated version of the play as well as my mentor's notes on it. She had me go through and choose which lessons I was interested in teaching. As I looked through the lessons she explained more in-depth what each one would involve and we worked
I enjoyed being able to be given the choice of what I teach because my previous experience was explicitly being told and directed on what was expected and needed to be done. When I was allowed last semester to create my miniature unit I had to account for the two other students in my group who had ideas and plans they wanted to see through. While considering my two peers I also had to consider my mentor's morning practicum group so the miniature unit quickly came to be developed by six individual people. Being handed the binder this semester and told to go through it and pick lessons was something so refreshing for me.
Ultimately I gave her a list of the lessons I was interested in and told her that I was unsure if there were any on there she specifically wanted to teach so I was going to leave the ultimate decision of what lesson I taught up to her as I would be going on break during the unit and miss about three weeks of her class and didn't want to choose something she'd had to wait on me to return for.
Week 11
Returning from the break was a very weird experience because it felt like nothing changed yet everything changed all at once and I had no idea how to separate and process the feelings. I hit the ground running upon my return to the classroom and immediately began the process of working on my miniature unit and planning my implementation of it. As students worked through the last bit of Macbeth I worked with my mentor teacher on spacing out my miniature unit and deciding dates.
Designing a unit plan was extremely challenging for me and I don't feel 100% confident in my results. I never really created a lesson plan alone so doing three individual lessons was perplexing. I would be confident in an idea and then scrap it. I would design a worksheet and then decide it was dumb and toss it. In retrospect, I realized I was too focused on making sure everything went as perfectly as it possibly could. I know this isn't realistic when I'm teaching and nothing ever actually goes as planned but I wanted my lesson plans to be cohesive and was dead set on making sure the students could easily transition from lesson to lesson and that each day was meaningful to the educational process
Week 12
I taught this week and I feel extremely confident with how it went. During my last lesson, I had a very bad disruption though that I felt derailed my first period a bit and made it somewhat difficult to get them back on task. While I was in the middle of teaching a teacher's aide came into the classroom looking for a flatbed my mentor had borrowed. The flatbed was being used to wheel snacks for concessions and had packs of water and drinks on it as well as a box filled with small snack bags. As I was mid-lesson the aide came in and began talking loudly and then went to get the flatbed and just started taking things off of it and tossing them on the ground which created an even larger disruption. As they were moving things around the bottom of the box gave out and snacks went everywhere and led to five additional minutes of the ordeal.
This was upsetting to me because I just felt like it disrupted my rhythm and while I get disruptions are going to happen I was still so anxious and did not know what I was doing. I attempted to laugh it off but I still just didn't know how to get the discussion back on track after this event occurred. Overall the rest of the unit went much better than I had anticipated and I feel very proud of how I approached things.
Week 13
Students are going into an independent novel unit this week and spent the majority of the week getting familiar with their options so they can choose what novel they will be reading. My mentor did a presentation on the novels they were able to choose from and explained what each novel brought to the table. Students will be writing an essay over their independent novel as their final and so my mentor also worked on introducing some small assignments that will help prepare them for the essay. An example of this is they will submit a summary of their novel once they can get further into their choice.
Once students choose their novels they will spend the rest of the week silent reading during class. My mentor makes it a point to ensure students do not have homework for her class so all of their reading and assignments for this unit will be done in class. As they finish their novels they will be given the class period to work on their essays with my mentor providing feedback .
Week 15
This week students conferenced with my mentor. Something I found interesting is that my mentor was able to know almost immediately who had read the book and who didn't. I am only familiar with one of the novels they were able to choose from so I don't know if it's because the students were so obvious about their lack of reading or if it is because my mentor is so familiar with the texts. I as a student am not great at doing my readings for class and I struggle to stay on top of assigned novels because I don't have much choice in the material. I have no room to judge on this matter but I also wonder how seasoned educators don't take this personally. I understand it's their grade and if they aren't willing to be helped then how can you truly help but all of these students have good rapport with my mentor and seem to enjoy discoursing with her regularly. When students enjoy you as a human but not as an educator how do you navigate that? How can you not take that personally?
My mentor was not hurt by their lack of reading which I found insane because she created her own curriculum and it had done nothing in class the past few weeks besides give them silent reading time so they would not have to do any work outside of her classroom. She sacrificed a lot of time they could have been working with standards and theories to make things easier and more manageable for her students and by them not reading they are essentially telling her that for the past two-three weeks they've spent forty-five minutes in her class doing absolutely nothing.
Week 16
On my last Monday in the field I taught a miniature lesson over theme. In all honesty, I was devastated by how this lesson went. I felt everything went wrong and I had no idea how to explain the concept. I have always tried to avoid being that teacher where because something came easily to me I had no clue how to teach it. When it came to theme, however, I found it difficult to figure out how to approach this topic. I approached it the best I could in the first hour and although I had planned it out I still felt incompetent standing up there. The students looked at me as if I were an alien speaking a foreign language and I felt so guilty on top of embarrassed because I did so horribly and ended up just confusing everything for them.
By the end of the first hour, my mentor and I came up with a solution and I adapted it well for the second hour but I had to sit with the embarrassment for a while. It was an awful way to end the field experience for me because it was the first lesson that truly stuck with me as being something that I was completely discontent with. I don't feel there was a redeeming aspect in my first lesson and am so grateful my mentor was able to offer me her usual way of teaching it so I could adapt and approach.