My second week has whizzed by, and although I only taught on two days, I feel like I learned and experienced a lot. Most notably, it was my first time conducting a lab with a full class (pizzas). The grade eight classes did a great job overall, but there were definitely challenges as a teacher to help students stay organized and finish on time. Otherwise, I was impressed with some of the students’ confidence and creativity with their pizzas—there were successful attempts at making cheese-stuffed crusts and adding red pepper flakes to their tomato sauce, for an extra kick! I pick up two blocks of grade 9 foods next week, and I am very excited to get started on the soup unit with them.
Comment on classroom management. How you are finding dealing with your classes, and are there any challenges or successes you already have faced?
Classroom management is something that I knew I would have to focus on improving, even from over a year ago when I was teaching small lessons during my observational practicum. At this point, I do not have a lot of experiences under my belt with regards to dealing with classroom management issues, so I feel that for now, I am trying out different strategies and techniques that work for me. One lesson that I struggled with classroom management was during the pizza demonstration, for a class with a wide range of personalities and dynamics. I had a group with students who were unfocused and drawing on each others’ recipes, another that was overall very quiet, and another that was high energy and, as a result, made frequent disruptions while I was teaching. I found it difficult to keep everyone settled and focused on me, while at the same time trying to reach out to students whose voices were not loud enough to be heard over the crowds. I have tried strategies such as having students sit apart from each other, and having them physically turn their chairs towards me so they are not facing their peers. Certain strategies worked for a while, but I ended up losing their interest near the end. I felt a slight wave of helplessness at this point, but I look forward to teaching more so that I can improve on my classroom management skills.
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