Student Teaching: Week 1

Welcome back to my blog! A new semester is upon us! Thus, a new format of blog posts! For the most part, I will now be using this as a weekly space to reflect on my student teaching experience as it progresses. I will loosely follow a prescribed format from my departmental guidelines, but, as usual, I will kind of write whatever makes sense to me at the time that somewhat fits in the parameters. In general, this will often mean that sections that were intended to be small will be large and sections that were intended to be long will be quite short. I hope to just write down whatever has been on my mind!

A Few Definitions

IM1, IM2: Integrated Math 1 and 2, the names of the courses in my school in place of the traditional Algebra/Geometry/Algebra II progression (there is also an IM3, I am just not placed in an IM3 classroom, so I am unlikely to address it)

Mr. C: pseudonym for my mentor teacher

Schoology: the learning management platform we will be using

TCs: teacher candidates, aka student teachers

PLC: professional learning community

Catalyst: a beginning of the class activity, aka warm-up/bellringer/entrance ticket/do now

What I Did This Week

Monday: observed two IM1 classes, met with Mr. C to discuss plans for the semester, took notes on student input to inform my later work based on their understanding, took notes on which students contributed to work to equalize voices down the road, did the math myself in order to be prepared to jump in/help in office hours, attended office hours, worked to gain access to Schoology

Tuesday: observed two IM1 classes and one IM2 class, introduced myself to the one class period I had yet to meet, read the edTPA handbook, took notes on student input to inform my later work based on their understanding, took notes on which students contributed to work to equalize voices down the road, worked to gain access to Schoology, attended an IM2 planning meeting, planned with the IM2 team for our trajectories as TCs, attended an advising meeting

Wednesday: acted as a second proctor for Map Testing, wrote an Intro Letter assignment for the students that was posted onto Schoology by Mr. C, began building the consent forms, began work on the edTPA context for learning, met with the other TCs from my school to discuss how the week is going/determine what we needed to do/share tips we had learned so far

Thursday: acted as a second proctor for Map Testing, reviewed and gave feedback on an instructional task for next week, researched technology options for remote teaching (iPhone stands to use as a document camera, mirrors for my built-in PC camera to turn it into a document camera, options for check-out from the school libraries, etc.), wrote this blog!

Friday: attended a grading/Schoology meeting, attended two one-on-one(-on-one) student meetings with test retakes, attended a math department PLC, held office hours, met with Mr. C to plan for the semester's responsibility projections, worked on edTPA materials/Seminar materials/etc.

What I Will Do Next Week

Schoology access will determine many of these tasks, however, the plan is:

• Read and respond to student intro letters
• Distribute student and parent permission forms for videography
• Begin planning a teaching segment and write an exam with my fellow TCs for IM2
• Attend another planning meetings, become more active/give more input
• Hopefully begin mirroring instruction to some extent, probably starting with catalysts in periods 4 and 6 (Wednesday at 10:10 and 1:30 -- these times are different this week due to MLK Day)
• Familiarize myself with Schoology
• Grade papers

How I’m Feeling & What’s On My Mind

I feel fine thus far, and I'm happy to be back in the groove of things. It is a bit difficult without Schoology access, as there just is not much to do. Even if I create and assign work for students, I cannot see what they turn in or give feedback on it at the moment. Additionally, school hours are short right now, which pushes back against the "full time" notion, and I don't feel like I was really given a reasonable answer for the situation. There just isn't much I can accomplish with the free time at the moment, without Schoology access or access to my mentor teacher during the latter half of the day on MW. I have read the edTPA materials and started in on what I can, but a lot of the information I could fill out right now rests in the hands of Schoology as well.

Aside from the mess of feeling like I'm doing it wrong, I'm very happy. I don't feel the need to be doing more yet, nor do I feel like I'm doing too much. While a bit more access would be nice, the slow ramp-up is working well and I don't really think the lack of work is detrimental to my learning and growth from the students. I got to see a lot from them this week, and I loved finally getting to join the last class. In the coming week, I want to take over a catalyst or two (or a class or two), and I am very excited to read and respond to the intro letter assignment.

What I’m Learning About the Teaching and Learning of my Subject Area

This week, I noticed Mr. C making new pedagogical choices as the class periods progressed. When the third class referred to "intercepts" when discussing the meaning of H(0), a specific vocabulary term that the first two classes had not picked up on, Mr. C then picked it up and specifically added it into the teaching of the later classes. This jumped out to me as such a smart move, and I think it helped a lot of the students make further connections between what they already knew (intercepts) and the new context they were applying it to (H(0)). It seemed to make a tough new concept a bit easier to pick up on and grasp for at least some of the students. I hope to mirror this process in the future in order to pick up on student learning and share it with all of my other students.

Almost all of the students asked about why a function had no maximum when it continued on to infinity, which showed me that it was a concept that needed a direct address in the class at some point, since students were unsure of it on the homework.

In going through some test retake practice, I saw multiple students find the correct answer for a question based on an interpretation that was different than intended. While the question wanted students to discover the number of lights needed for an entire triangular area, these students found the number of lights for only one side of the triangle. If I ran into this again, I would want to stop and check if this really was students just misreading/not reading deeply enough and using the first number they got. However, this time around I think it was a function of the way the question was written. The wording did ask for students to find all 3 sides, but it could be easily understood to be asking for only one side instead. This is another great reminder to always reread my test questions and have them read by others if possible to avoid confusion.