This week was not really much of a week! There were three snow days and I got only two days of teaching in. The two days that I did teach were great though! On Wednesday, I officially took over my English 9 class and created a charter with my students. I feel the lesson went well and I got some great feedback on my ability to manage the class which I really appreciated. I think my greatest struggle right now is improving my diction and eliminating filler words such as so, like, uhm, and uh. My students were very helpful in getting me to eliminate these words from my diction, clapping every time I said “so.” It really was a great strategy. It forced me to slow my speech and really think about what I was going to say next. I feel happy that slowly I am improving. I think what I really want to focus on now, along with still improving my diction, is slowing down, make appropriate adaptations for my ELL students so that they are also getting something from my lessons, and creating forms of assessment that are fair and appropriately assess the academic abilities of my students. Also, I feel that I really need to focus on setting concrete expectations in my classes and following through with them. For instance, although I created a charter with my classes, I did not think to create a penalty for late assignments or a classroom policy having to do with redoing assignments. If i say no phones, and students are pulling out their phones, what are the repercussions? These are some things I need to consider still. All in all, I am loving my classes and my students! I have built positive relationships with my students and I make sure my students know that I care about their success and well being.