This week made me realize that becoming an educator is what I’m destined to do. It was the most difficult week that I encountered; however, all the struggles are going to make me wiser and knowledgeable for the rest of my life. As a teacher candidate, I’m learning from all aspects of becoming a well thought out teacher. I’m learning from my FA, SA, Hellings staff, and especially the students. I’m hoping that these struggles that I’m currently dealing with won’t define who I am, but to see that I’m worthy to do my best. I am incorporating more engaging lessons and I added 3 new subjects this week: French, music and physical education. Although, this week has not been my greatest, I truly enjoy adding new lessons and getting feedback in ways to improve for the remaining weeks of my practicum. My French and music lessons have been really fun. In French, I taught numbers 1-15 and added different ways of engaging the students to feel comfortable saying the numbers in French. In music, I taught the class body percussion and creating a soundscape. I added short clips of different soundscapes and as an activity the students created their own freestyle soundscape and presented it to the class. Physical education was challenging since it was my first time teaching P.E and therefore, I wanted to be observed formally. I taught the class California Kickball and although the students still had fun, there could have been a major improvement, such as using California kickball vocabulary and not allowing the students to enforce the rules. I was glad that I did get observed, because it made me aware of different settings and I will re-teach this lesson again feeling more confident. Moreover, I was apart of the regional track and I had lots of fun watching dedicated students from different schools working so hard and overall, having good fun and showing sportsmanship. I was lucky to be apart of this event.

What does music look like, feel like, and sounds like?

This week, I taught the class how to make their Mother’s Day cards and it was really fun. At first, I thought I was looking for a Mother’s Day card for my SA to teach the class, but when she told me that I would love to see you teach it, I was really nervous because I’m not so artsy. However, I must say, I had so much fun and the class was incredibly patient and following my steps by steps instructions. My card was a jar filled with a hard and it said, “I cannot contain my love for you…” The students made their own jars with my directions and it turned out really great. It was a good teachable moment for me.

This week was a little overwhelming for me, because I was struggling with combining two different contexts of geometry with my grade 5 and 6 students. I was not familiar with the material and I tried to comprehend how I can teach this to both grades efficiently and in a timely manner. However, it took me the whole class just going over the lesson and no time for them to start working on their activity. I realized I could of done this differently, if I was confident with the material beforehand. Moreover, I had students getting into conflict with each other during lunch time. Apparently, one of the student’s pushed one student and they started hitting each other; while, the other student bit another student on his hand. I know it was really stressful and I was thinking what the heck happened during that 40 minutes. It was a struggle just dealing with confrontation and how to be rationale at the same time. The student who bit the other student went to the office and the principal was talking to him, while I talked to the other two students. I first talked to both of them one on one, and told them that they should not resort to violence and if there is a problem, they need to talk it out. They ended up apologizing and started laughing with each other near the end of the day. It was a stressful week; however, it did prepare me for situations that may occur in the future.

My grade 5 and 6 students love the book, The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis. I enjoy reading it to them as well. They constantly have questions and they become aware of difficulties around the world. I get them to do reading response and they make inferences with what they read. I love reading their responses, because it allows me to dig deeper in what they personally think about certain situations. I love that they are engaged in this book and I feel good that they take this serious. Overall, majority of my students really enjoy reading and it’s nice to see that.

As the weeks continue to progress, I start seeing myself as a teacher. I’m starting to feel more confident with myself and taking on more responsibilities in the classroom. I used to feel a little intimated in not knowing how to take action in the classroom, but I let go of my fears and the outcome has been treating me well so far. I still struggle and still get bumpy moments, but that’s what makes me appreciate teaching. As teachers, we are constantly on edge and learning something new each day. The things that I would like to work on is to feel more confident with some lessons such as math and have that teacher third eye when I’m helping students one on one. For example, some of my students need extra support and I’ll help them; however, I tend to forget to scan the classroom because I’m so focused on helping those students to understand their assignment. Also, I’m still working on my transitions like handing out worksheets to the classroom. I notice that it’s not being done in the most effective way and I would like to see an improvement as I continue to teach.

I must say that my first week of practicum has been the most challenging, yet rewarding week for me. It started challenging due to the fact that I still haven’t found my teacher voice. It was a struggle managing my students and that they were being really disruptive. They weren’t even listening to me after 2 or 3 warnings and that was my first day of starting the week. My SA stated I need to set the tone with them and it has to be done this week. It was really stressful and I didn’t want to be a disappointment to myself nor to my SA and FA. I created a lesson plan that really helped me reach out to my students and I must say I’m relieved that this lesson plan worked. The lesson plan was brainstorming class expectations and rules that we need to make, in order for our classroom to be effective in learning and safe for everyone. They understood and started applying that to themselves. The biggest aww moment for me was when lunch was over and all of my students were quietly lined up and walked into the classroom. They had their planners and books ready to go. It made me feel so special that they cared and respected our class expectations. Since then, managing the class has not been that difficult. I still need to work on this and hopefully become a professional at the end of this experience.

What I learned from the Inquiry Presentations

Homework:

• Pros- fosters responsibilities and improves understanding of class materials; increases study habits; allows parents to be more involved with what their child is doing at school.
• Cons- increases anxiety and stress when the child does not understand their homework. Lack of help from parents (they might not understand it either) and students may not have available resources such as the Internet to use.

Teachers Support Grieving Children in the Classroom:

• As teachers, we should support students who lost someone close to them. Therefore, look for resources that can educate us about this sensitive topic and be there for our students. Most importantly, we should respect all grieving styles and be aware of different cultural traditions with grieving.

Flipped Classroom:

• Flipped classrooms can increase interactions
• Frees up class times
• Khan Academy for math is an excellent resource that helps students understand math and give them extra practice.
• Con: Mandatory use of technology and internet

Strategies for Maintaining Anxiety

• Anxiety can take in many forms like generalized anxiety, separation anxiety, selective mutism anxiety disorder, specific phobias and social anxiety disorder.
• Teachers can help students by:
  • Seating them close to you
  • Being clear and repeat, so giving students a sense of direction
  • Cool- down
  • Answering questions

Music and Education

• Singing can improve communication
• It’s emotionally arousing
• Helps students calm down and stay on task.
• Music can be cross-curricularà math (fractions) and science (using different vegetables to create sounds)

The teacher candidates did a phenomenal job and discussed all important inquiries that we should be prepared for, when we leave the program. Some of the inquiries that stood out to me were how to have a creative education, how to motivate students, how to support ELL in the classroom, how to address combination classrooms, and how to help students with various subjects. These are all great inquiries! The strategies that I really enjoyed were allowing the classroom to be a community and not only be teacher focused. Therefore, allowing each student to feel included, and helping him or her to succeed. If students were to have a conflict with the teacher or another student, they can use strategies like cool down, go for a walk, describe the conflict, describe how they feel, and try to brainstorm and find a solution. Overall, I had a great time observing everyone’s inquiry presentations. I learned so much and I want to make sure that I will implement all these skills in my classroom, in order for my students and myself to be successful.

After my last lesson with the science experiment, I took all the advice my FA told me (and believe me, I needed it) and tried my best to work effectively on my next lesson. I did an art lesson creating 3-D shapes. The objective of this art lesson was to use one-point perspective, where all the lines move into space and meet at a single point. I think this lesson was much better compared to the last one. Even though, I thought this art lesson would be the one that I would worry about. The way I set up this lesson was to have my students’ undivided attention and wait for my instructions. I asked my students to have their hands on their laps and watch me do the first step. After doing the first step, I told my students to pick up their pencils and start creating their shapes around the paper. While they were doing that I went around and helped students if they needed further assistances. I continued to repeat the steps until the art project was done. We did run out of time, but got majority of it done. I think with this lesson I had more control, but yet, I still need more to work on. Again, what can students do while their done and waiting for other students to be finished. Or calling out, how to tell students that we do not call out, we raise our hand and wait patiently to be answered. My SA is an excellent mentor and provided me additional support on what I can do to improve. I told her to observe me on my management, since I still struggle with it. She gave me extra resources to help me prepare for my long term practicum and I must say I am really grateful that I have an amazing cohort, FA, and SA.

When my FA was observing me, I thought I was organized and prepared to teach my lesson to my class. I initially thought this would be my best lesson compare to the other lesson that I was going to teach later on (I was still feeling iffy about my second lesson). Unfortunately, my lesson didn’t go well the way I thought it would be. My lesson was a small science experiment using two different brands of gum. The purpose of the experiment was to see if the mass of the gum would decrease or increase when it is being chewed for few minutes. I think my lesson itself was not bad the students were extremely happy and they were able to finish the assignment in the given time. The problem was that I still struggle with management. I didn’t have a wait time, the students were calling out and I had no control of how to handle the situation. I guess I was nervous and I haven’t taught since October. It was a good wake up call, and glad that I taught before the long practicum, because I will definitely create lesson plans on classroom management with my students and implement couple of house keeping rules when I teach the class. I think this will be great, because students will know what I expect from them and vise versa. Moreover, I need to always have a plan B. This is because things happen and it may not go your way or if students are one step ahead what can they do while waiting for everyone to be on the same page. Furthermore, I will do this experiment again, but being more alert and aware of my surroundings.