The First Day

It's official. I survived my first day as a student teacher. I knew I would survive of course, but I had no idea how the day would go. The night before, my biggest concern was sleeping through my alarm and/or being late. This has happened before, so I was afraid it would happen again. I don't have the best luck waking up in the morning, so I set a dozen or so alarms. Luckily, I only needed a few of them, but I had them just in case. Even though I didn't make it out the door as early as I would have liked to, I still arrived at the school by 7:35 a.m. I was hoping for 7:30 a.m., so I think I did a pretty good job. 

When I got to my classroom, Mrs. H was standing in the hallway for morning hall duty. She was talking with a group of students, so she had each of them introduce themselves to me.One of the things that amazed (surprised?) me the most was how much the students struggle to properly communicate with others. I was raised to always shake someone's hand when meeting for the first time, but for most of the students, a handshake is a foreign gesture. When I first went to visit SMHSNC (long acronym, I know), Mrs. H introduced some of her students to me, and both times she made sure that her students told me their name and shook my hand. When she introduced me to individual students today, she did the same thing. After meeting a few of the students in the hallway, the first warning bell rang and it was time to meet my first class!

SMHSNC operates on a rotating block schedule with four classes a day meeting every other day. Today was a black day, so first period was English 9. This group of kids was great. They introduced themselves to me by telling me their first name, last name, and something interesting about themselves. It's a small class of ten or twelve students, so it shouldn't take me too long to remember their names. There is also an Ed Tech in the class who I'll be able to work with, and I'm looking forward to that opportunity. Where today was the first day of the new semester for this class, we spent some time free writing because that is one thing that Mrs. H wants to focus on, along with free reading. After the students wrote for 15 minutes, they went through and marked two things in their writing that they thought they did well on and one thing they would like to improve. Mrs. H calls the activity two stars and one wish. I really like this activity actually and I think it's something I will continue to use in the classroom, both now while I'm student teaching and when I have my own classroom. It's an easy way to get students to start assessing their writing. Mrs. H then had the students use a rubric for the 6+1 traits to relate their two stars and one wish to. Things got a little wonky after this because we tried to introduce their homework to them, which was to use the 6+1 rubric and the MUGS definition to self-assess their writing in general, which they seemed to understand. Then we jumped back and had them fill out an exit ticket about their free writing pieces. Mrs. H then tried to get them started on the next activity that she wanted them to work on, which was going through unit two of the Springboard book and looking for academic vocabulary, but most of the students were missing the document she had asked them to create, so this made it difficult for the class to do what she asked. At this point, time ran out, so I think we'll pick back up from there on Friday.

13 minute break between periods 1 and 2...

Period two is English 10 with a large group of sophomores. Most of the students are in their second year with Mrs. H, so they have had extra time to create a bond, and you can certainly tell with the way most of the students respect her. They have their behavior issues like any other group of teenagers stuck in a classroom together for 70+ minutes, but really there doesn't seem to be much more than a few students talking when they're not supposed to be. Just like period one, everyone introduced themselves to me, then we planned the not-party we're having next class. They're studying different cultures right now, so Mrs. H is going to bring in some curry and a few other dishes for them to try. Some students are bringing in drinks and cups, and I think I'll make some brownies. They might not be from another culture, but what party isn't complete without brownies? After students signed up to bring different items for the party, Mrs. H went through the sections of unit two that she is going to be collecting on Friday. The students had a majority of the sections complete, and because some of the sections overlap, they only have to turn in one out of three options. 
Mrs. H told me that this section of sophomores needs to be challenged more than what the curriculum is doing, and she wants me to take over this section soon, so I'll be looking at the Springboard curriculum to see where I can push them further. I'll also be working on incorporating grammar and vocabulary into my lessons, which might possibly be two of my favorite topics to teach. There's a book coming out in February, called Word Nerds that has some strategies for implementing vocabulary in the classroom. The full text is currently available online, so I'm going to check it out and see if there's anything I can use in it that my students will benefit from. 

After period two is a 20 minute "Connections" period, which is basically homeroom. 2-3 days of the week the students have what is called a Guided Work Period, where they work on homework and sometimes have group activities that they do. The other 2 days of the week are for independent reading, which at SMHSNC is called Free to Read (or as the students say, Forced to Read). Tomorrow is a reading day, so it looks like I'll have to bring a book to school with me (worst thing ever, right?). I don't know if this daily structure is the same in other rooms, but I do like it and look forward to seeing how it goes this semester.

Lunch comes right after Connections and because our classroom is on the first floor, we have first lunch. Mrs. H eats in her classroom, mostly to avoid the politics that happen in the teachers' room. This is not the first time I've heard this, and I think it's a good piece of advice. It's really easy to get swept up into the negativity of other teachers and forget why you wanted to do what you're doing.

Period three was another group of English 9ers. This section was bigger than the first and within the section there are several different ability levels. Mrs. H said that she's been trying to differentiate but with the way Springboard is set up it is challenging, and having looked at Springboard, I can see why. One of the important things for student teachers to learn how to do, in my opinion, is differentiate, so this section will be really good for me to work with. It will certainly be challenging, but I'm definitely up for the challenge. Mrs. H let me teach most of the class, with some help from her, because it was almost the exact same as the first section of freshmen from today, so I had already seen the lesson once. I think my explanations were a little rough, mostly because I wasn't entirely sure what the lesson was. I had seen her teach it, but I hadn't been paying a lot of attention because I wasn't expecting to teach it the same day. Thinking about how the lesson went with this section, I think that a lot of the students would benefit from small group work. I found that I was explaining myself to each student, and some students needed multiple explanations. Group work would not eliminate my having to explain myself again, but it would allow the students to feel comfortable about asking a peer for help. One of my favorite moments from the day came from this class. One of the more vocal students, D, was sitting next to a quiet student, T, who was struggling to follow along and did not really understand what was being asked of him. I had approached T a few times and offered more explanation and tried to answer his questions, but he didn't have any, at least not that he was comfortable sharing with me. At one point, I looked over, and instead of goofing off like I would have expected, D was explaining to T what the assignment was and going through it step by step. Mrs. H says that D sees me as a fresh start and she thinks he is trying to impress me. I'm hoping that this means he will be a good student and will actually do his work for me. I'm going to try and push him a little because from what I've seen, he seems totally capable of doing the work, but just doesn't want to do it. There's a group of students in the class who are also capable and have a lot of potential, so I'll be working on pushing them more too.

Period four was prep, which was a nice way to end the day. It gave Mrs. H and I a chance to talk about the day and tomorrow, and a chance to unwind. We took a trip to the library, where the librarian offered me any of the reference books that they're getting rid of! I was really impressed with the amount of YA Lit I saw when I first walked in. Not what my high school library looked like when I was in school!