Student Teaching: Week 2

 What I Did This Week

Monday: had the day off for MLK Day!

Tuesday: attended two IM1 classes, attended an advisory period with seniors where we tried out some new technology to implement in the following class, worked in small(er) groups with the second IM1 class, worked to gain access to Schoology, attended the seminar class where I finally DID get access to Schoology, started to explore Schoology and learn about it

Wednesday: attended two IM1 classes and one IM2 class, continued exploring Schoology and used it to help me take attendance (something I do every day!), attended (and offered input at!) an IM2 planning meeting, planned with the IM2 team for the edTPA progression and laid track for when and what we will be planning, taught the second IM1 class (with Mr. C still taking a few portions just out of necessity with structure (which of us had access to technology/keys/etc)

Thursday: attended two IM1 classes, worked with half the class directly for part of the lesson, planned (non-instructional in terms of math but instructional in terms of technology) tasks for the next classes, prepared materials for the next classes, began reading intro letters, continued learning about Schoology, wrote this blog!

Friday: attended two IM1 classes and one IM2 class, taught the second IM1 class, reviewed intro letters

What I Will Do Next Week: A Reflection

Here, I will repost my expected tasks for the week and reflect on whether they were accomplished using a traffic light style color scale

• Read and respond to student intro letters -- HAVE YET TO DO THIS BECAUSE WE ASSIGNED IT A BIT LATER THAN EXPECTED
• Distribute student and parent permission forms for videography -- HAVE YET TO DO THIS BECAUSE OF SCHOOLOGY/GENERAL ACCESS DELAYS
• Begin planning a teaching segment and write an exam with my fellow TCs for IM2 -- HAVE PLANS IN THE WORKS FOR THIS (GOT DATES SOLIDIFIED) BUT HAVE NOT MADE OTHER PROGRESS
• Attend other planning meetings, become more active/give more input -- THIS FELT GOOD, I DEFINITELY AM FEELING MORE COMFORTABLE ABOUT SPEAKING UP
• Hopefully begin mirroring instruction to some extent, probably starting with catalysts in periods 4 and 6 -- I TAUGHT A WHOLE LESSON IN PERIOD 6! I ALSO HAVE DONE A LOT OF "SMALL" GROUP WORK WITH HALF OF THE CLASS ON JAMBOARD FOR PERIODS 1, 3, 4
• Familiarize myself with Schoology -- I'M AT 70-80% CONFIDENCE WITH THIS AND DEFINITELY FEELING BETTER EVERY DAY :)
• Grade papers -- THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BUT I AM NOT CONCERNED THAT IT DIDN'T, IT'S JUST A TASK I EXPECT TO COME MY WAY AT SOME POINT BUT I AM NOT SCARED OF IT AND FIND IT FUN!

What I Will Do Next Week

• Read and respond to student intro letters
• Distribute student and parent permission forms for videography
• Plan the next unit for IM2 alongside my fellow TCs
• Teach part or all of IM2
• Continue to mirror instruction in afternoon IM1 periods, expand to two!
• Continue to learn about Schoology
• Continue to attend and contribute to planning meetings
• Grade papers?

How I’m Feeling & What’s On My Mind

I'm feeling fine! Teaching my first class was really fun and felt like a totally comfortable step. At this point, having someone to lean on/ask questions to when something goes awry is super helpful, and I'm hopeful and confident that I will feel less reliant on Mr. C once I start planning the materials myself. It's obviously more likely for me to have questions that he needs to answer now since I'm just imitating what he has done in previous periods.

I am heading back to campus at the end of this week, so I'm a bit anxious about what will change, for the good and the bad and the not-good-or-bad. I am weighing whether or not I will go into the school building, since Mr. C is teaching from there without students for now. It has some pluses with being in the same room, using the document camera, and some other things. However, that also expands the number of people I am interacting with and adds travel time to my day. It has definitely been nice to just hop down stairs to make lunch, especially on days when our break is only around 20 or 30 minutes long.

What I’m Learning About Teaching and Learning

This week I purposefully decided to change this to just "about teaching and learning" and drop the "my subject area" because I think it is more true to what I am learning in the classroom. While I do gain a lot of insights about math, sometimes (and right now a lot of the time) I learn a lot more about how a classroom functions, not just a math one. For example, in trying to get the kids to engage more, we've been trying out lots of new technology in the classroom. To go along with this, Mr. C is establishing a "technology goal" for the day, and it's creating a new line in my lesson plans, at least some of the time. Much like a learning goal or a language goal, these tech goals are really important when everything we are doing is online and we constantly need new technologies to accomplish our non-technology goals.

I've noticed that once students get in their heads that they "divide out" the GCF, that idea seems to really stick. This results in the GCF never traveling with the expression to the end and just sort of disappearing like it never existed in the first place. I'm working on ways to reword this notion of the GCF when factoring to see how we can get it to stick with the expression and reminding myself to be very careful about the language I am using in the classroom, since it always has weird implications that I don't necessarily expect or anticipate.