From Green Blazers To Blue Corduroys

The Journey of Student Teaching: Day 35 Seventh Week Reflections: If student teaching didn't challenge me then how could I grow as a future teacher? Essential Question for this week: What is something you learned while teaching this week? In the mid way point of the semester I find myself contencting to the memes on how if you ain’t tired you ain’t a teacher. Especially with this half way mark being the end of the first half of student teaching I find myself being reminded more and more about this quote that we used to describe student teaching. Don’t get me wrong I have had some great lessons. I have. My big thing that I also find myself saying is that as I get into my second half of student teaching I need to not be satisfied with a couple of good lessons and a couple of bad lessons. I need to grow. I know this may sound like I am being hard on myself but I see that if I accept this my students will begin to expect this of myself as well. And to me it’s...

The Journey of Student Teaching: Day 20 Fourth Week Reflections: Teaching a Full Load Essential Question for this Week: What did you learn this week while student teaching? To me this fourth week started out really nerve racking.  Only 3 days into the semester and I will be teaching for a total of 7 out of 9 periods in the day.  To me this was nerve racking more because this made me realize that this was real. With teaching 7 periods what I learned is that I needed to be willing to let the Inquiry and Independent work happen. As the saying goes: When you assume . . . And I probably started last week with that with the students. For example when I hear the word Biotechnology I think that students should have strong scores in chemistry and biology before taking it.  What I didn't plan on was on that in a high school not everything is taught on the level that I learned stuff in high school. And so I started Biotech last week with this feeling of total dread bec...

Weekly Investment: Evaluating Learning (Part One) Scenario: I have one student that I would consider the best in my class. She does great on all assignments and on all tests. She leaves for the summer with an A grade on her report card.  My other student on the other hand is a handful.  He struggles on all assignments, and as a result he walks out with a D grade, which in highschool is still passing so he can continue onto the next grade. Both of these students preform an SAE which has them working at a local nursery part time over the summer.  During my mid year SAE review I sat down with their supervisors to get an idea of where my students were and what I would need to work on to help develop them as students.  The supervisor was not impressed with my A grade students work ethic and ability to work on a team and recommended that she receive a D letter grade. My student which has always struggled in my classroom though was one of the hardest working part tim...