The Student Teacher Chronicles: Day One

Wow...day one and two are both done. I realize that this first post is a day late, but, forgive me, yesterday was a crazy exciting and busy day. Going in to the day I was excited. I was nowhere near as nervous as I thought I would be. I consign this to the fact that I was: one, well-prepared, all my copies were made and my lessons were ready to go; two, that I had experienced something similar during our practicum experience at Crosswinds; three, that I had spent so much time thinking about this day; and four, that I had talked so much with my fellow cohort members--many of whom had already started their complete student teaching experience. I slept better than I expected--of course, the Tylenol PM I took at 6:30 might account for some of my ability to quite literally, hit the sack.

I woke up to my alarm and jumped out of bed, put on my teacher outfit, and headed out the door. I am SO grateful that I have Molly at Hopkins with me and that we are able to carpool. I picked Molly up, and we had plenty of time to talk out our pre-teaching jitters before we arrived at Hopkins. We arrived at school around 6:30 and--neither of us teaching until 9:15--were able meet with our teachers and further prep for class.

Ann and I are team-teaching a lower level literature class together during second block, so she took priority in meeting with me that morning. Together we finalized a seating chart and went over how we would divide the procedural aspect of the first class. (I should mention that Hopkins is on a block schedule and that some of their courses are only one quarter long--both of the classes I am teaching are a quarter long and, thus, day one for me was day one for my students as well.) Ann thought it would be best for me to start out the class by introducing myself and then she would follow along with Natalia (a special education specialist). Then we would take turns discussing class procedure and the calendar of events. We would do a get-to-know-you activity, and then have the students write us each a letter about themselves in their notebooks.

Next, I met with Marty. I am teaching one of her advanced writing classes and she is leaving me to it. She asked me if I had everything set-up and if I knew how I was going to introduce myself. We did a bit of role-playing in which she was a student asking where Ms. Snyder was, who I was, and if I was a student teacher. I really appreciated this and it gave some ideas on how to introduce myself. She gave me some tips about not seeming defensive and to mention my status only if asked.

Next thing I knew, the bell rang and I was off to my first class. I felt that the class went alright. I know some of the students from working with them during my observation, but there are some new faces too. Right away I knew that some of the students will become my favorites--even though I know we aren't supposed to have those. There is one girl in the class named Britney who has a bit of an attitude. Add to this her loudness and dominating personality, and we have a class problem. She questioned many of our procedures, causing others to mirror her statements. The get-to-know-you activity went pretty well, afterward Ann realized that she usually has students do this after they write their letters to us--evident by the extremely specific answers on the sheet, like: find someone who...owns a border collie, works at aeropostle, was born in Chicago. The students still seemed to like it and it helped us get to know them better too.

Many of the students completed the letter assignment within 15 minutes and they had nothing to do while the rest of the class finished their letters. Two students wanted to finish the letters at home, and, therefore, didn't really even try to complete them in class, and several more wrote much less than the required page length.

Overall, the class went well, but it was so obvious that Ann has done this before and I had not. Despite my efforts to open the class and establish myself as one of two main teachers, I felt a little out of place.

Things to work on:

• Getting the classes attention focused on me without adding to the noise.
• Coming across as more assured and confident--part of this might have been nerves about working with two experienced teacher in this setting, but who knows.
• Providing even more structure to the class.
  
• Working with students and getting them to work.

Next was my writing class...I admit I was a bit flustered going into it straight from the literature course, but I know that's something I just need to get over. Many of the students were surprised to see me and wondered where Marty was--some had her for previous courses. I introduced myself, went over the syllabus, and administered some paperwork for the class. All of this was fine, but I think that I rambled a bit, talked a little to fast, and sometimes I found myself saying some things that put me on the defensive--exactly what Marty had told me not to do. Ugh. As soon as I said some of those things I regretted it.

After the maintenance stuff, we did a questionnaire in which we answered questions about ourselves. Then we went around the room and shared answers to some of the questions which helped me get to know the students and vice-versa. Next we went over some comma rules. I had the students work in pairs and read a comma rule, create an original sentence, and then teach both their rule and their sentence to the rest of the class. This went over fairly well, and all the students seemed to understand the different rules. Then we went over how we define the "writing process," I modeled the activity associated with that--which was homework for later in the week--with my own definition of the "writing process," and they had some time to work on the grammar questions due at the end of the week.

I thought the class went smoothly if nothing else. There were no major issues and other than the typical boredom of procedural stuff, the students were invested in the assignments we were doing.

Things to work on:

• Thinking and acting on the fly--quicker more coherent responses.
• Presenting information in a more clear and concise manner.
• Continuing to find ways to engage students.
• Seeking out questions in a more clear way.

Thus ended the first day of teaching. Nothing too bad, nothing really great, but definitely full of possibilities.