Final Blog for Student Teaching!

Dear 19-year-old self,

            You just finished up your second year of college. Guess what, now time for you to enter your major. You will work hard and grow. This next year will also be one of your toughest in the personal aspect. Survival is key. After getting through junior year of college, then you will be faced with conquering senior year and student teaching. Again, a lot of changes with your personal life that is beyond your control. I promise you will get through everything and become a stronger person. Just continue to work hard. Remember, Student Teacher will be tough as well. During so, you will grow as a person and become so much better at management. You will know more about the content and feel slightly more comfortable about standing in front of the class feeding them information (only slightly though, this is still terrifying as ever). However, while Student Teaching, you will need to learn to balance school, class, and work in an effective way. This is meaning that you need to get done everything in a timely manner. Do not wait! Know that the one thing you don’t wait on to do will be the one thing that something bad happens to so turn things in early! You should never doubt yourself or your capabilities! That will be a partial downfall. There are life factors that will come into play, like realizing teaching anytime soon may not be for you. This is the hardest realization. Once you figure this out, you will feel better. So maybe try to realize this sooner and continue working hard. Remember, you have great support around you within the program, use it! Sometimes you forget that you have that. Your program will do anything they can to help you feel secure. It will help you understand your realization and will continue to support you. This program will also help you to grown in your content knowledge as well as teaching knowledge. Use it all wisely! Implement those things you learned, you are allowed to do so. Overall, everything in the program will do you justice and you won’t want to anything to be changed. You will do just fine your final 2 years. Work hard, gain knowledge, use said knowledge, and don’t give up. Although teaching may not be for you at this time or you may not want to teach at the secondary level, you will gain valuable information to apply for when you decide to teach!

Hang in there,

Almost Graduated Sheila

Stay Positive Until the End

            This semester has flown by and I am just now realizing it is April! With all the stress and the consistent business, there is no wonder that the year is winding down. From speaking with fellow student teachers, I know that we have all been stressed out lately. The important thing is to not bring the extra baggage into the classroom. Students know when teachers are having a bad day; just like us teachers know when students are having bad days. I found a few tips to help keep that positive attitude alive and well in the classroom. Of course that means when your students have left for the day you can have a small session of crying or wanting to throw things. I don’t advise either of those and hope that no one is going home and crying after a school day. So when stress is winning at the moment and you are finding it difficult to stay positive busyteacher.org has six tips and tricks to try:

11)    Prepare Well

22)    Mistakes are Fun

33)    Encourage

44)    Be a Good Actor

55)    Have a Backup Plan

66)    Simple Things That Matter

I like these six and chose this specific website for these because they seem like common sense and that we all know these. However, when we are under stress we can forget the simplest things. I just wanted to remind others and myself to stay positive in the classroom!

            To keep up with the positive in the classroom theme, my students have been working a little harder lately. Since the year is wrapping up, students are starting to realize they don’t want to fail English and have to retake it later. Trying to keep them motivated has helped with this process. Currently, we are reading “King Lear” and the students love it. They are learning about the plot and the characters while getting involved into the story. I get told that they hate certain characters and love others. This is a great feeling to know that my students are enjoying Shakespeare. However, their next task is going to be writing an essay. Actually, they have two more to go. They are not excited about this and are already giving up on them when they have not started yet. This is when we start to give the “light at the end of the tunnel” speech. Trying to keep them motivated to complete the essay and have a decent project will be tough. I tell them that they at least enjoy “King Lear” and when you enjoy something, it is easier to write about. They just want to be lazy and still pass.

            Keeping up with the positive attitude even more, I will be starting my own lesson soon about Mythology. The students are excited and I am too. I am going to have my students create a group project, considering they have not completed many projects this year. My students work well in groups and this is an effective way of keeping them motivated to complete their work. They are great motivators for one another. I look forward to seeing how this unit plays out and more specifically, the project!

Remember to keep a smile on and to stay positive! The school year is almost up and graduation is close!

Link to read more about the six steps: http://busyteacher.org/4221-staying-positive-tips-and-tricks-to-keep-that.html

Breaking through

I have been teaching my KPTP lesson for the past two weeks now. During my lesson, I have been teaching my students sonnets. To start off, we learned about the different types of sonnets and practicing analyzing them. We focused more on Shakespearean sonnets to ease our way into more of Shakespeare’s works. Students normally struggle with Shakespearean language. This is typical, especially for freshmen, to not understand what the sonnet is saying because of the language. In a previous class, we studied the language and even took a test over it. Due to studying issues students did not do so well. They are learning the power of studying now after that test. They also are finding out that asking “why do we need this in life?” gives them the answer of “You will need it in the next week when we start reading Shakespeare.” So this then leads to the question of “Why are we reading Shakespeare? We won’t need that.” Well, the answer to that is that they are correct; they may not use it as much in the future. This will help them analyze things that they do not understand. They will be almost bilingual because the language is so different from ours. Our students are learning that Shakespearean words are used more frequently than they think. They can figure things out because of the help of Shakespeare. Another part of the answer to the same question from students is that Shakespeare wrote about themes that are timeless. The same themes are used today, they are learning from where the themes were put into practice that far back. There is so much more that they are learning from reading and understanding Shakespeare; students just do not realize it at the time of learning.

            To get back to the breakthrough of my classes; I had my students review what they learned about sonnets (what makes up a sonnet, what the key components are, etc.) and apply their knowledge into writing their own sonnet. Of course, I did NOT have them write in iambic pentameter. They recognize that this is part of the sonnet process, but that would have been too difficult for my students in a short period of time. I also had my students present their sonnet to the class and explain the accompanying visual that they chose to compliment their sonnet. Out of the two classes I had do this assignment, all but four students completed and presented their sonnet on time. I am not sure about those four students if they will complete the assignment. This is a proud moment for me because I was able to give them a difficult task and have the majority of my students complete and enjoy the assignment. I asked my students to write me a paragraph over their inspiration for the sonnet and then tell me how they thought they did. The majority of them said they were proud of their sonnet and enjoyed sharing their work to the class. Being able to get this reaction from my students made my week! The creativity that was given through their work was outstanding. All of my students were engaged and enjoyed sharing their creative side.

            The website I have chosen to incorporate in this post is a list of 30 ways to use creativity in the classroom. As teachers, we cannot be afraid to use creativity to an advantage in our classroom. My students now understand sonnets and were able to do so in a creative way. They all enjoyed the assignment. The link:

http://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/30-things-you-can-do-to-promote-creativity-in-your-classroom/

Keeping Everything Together

Student teaching has officially begun and already life is beyond hectic. People can warn you that student teaching will be busy beyond belief, but you almost don’t believe all the warnings. Well, they are real and I have officially figured this out. What I have realized from this semester so far is that plans NEVER seem to go as you want them to. My CT and I have changed our plans for this semester multiple times. I knew that as a teacher, you change your mind and have to rearrange many times. This is part of the deal; we work with our lesson plans and change them to make them work for our classes. I have learned that having lesson plans made in advanced does help; just scheduling certain dates becomes the tricky part. Having to move the dates around can be frustrating at times, but seeing the students benefit from these decisions helps ease the mind. Reflection over these decisions has helped a lot as well. This is why our teachers stress to us just how important reflection time is. Planning so far has been by far the most difficult part of my student teaching. I know this will only get easier as time goes on and I gain more experience.

            Now to focus on the classroom itself, the students are having a problem staying motivated. Grades are not giving them the push to try harder and do their best. This seems to be the low of the school year. Where students just have a hard time getting back into the groove and do not believe their grades at this point matter as much. So how do we, as teachers, motivate our students to keep going and not give up now?

            I found a list of ideas to help us keep students from hitting rock bottom. http://www.teachthought.com/teaching/21-simple-ideas-to-improve-student-motivatio/

This link has a list of 21 ideas to help teachers get out of the same routine. I mean, we teachers need to change it up every now and then also. Some ideas are of having the students feel like they have more power over their decisions in the classroom. I think sometimes we forget to let students have some control, we get so caught up in planning and hoping that it is engaging that the students feel like robots doing the same thing. Group work can only go so far to motivate students. To go along with this point, my CT and I have decided to have our students pick a book of their choosing to read. They will then do a book report over said book. Students will then connect their book to something happening today in the real world. Our students were excited by the fact they were able to pick out their own book. Giving them that one thing, they already were okay with the assignment. Hopefully they will end up completing and turning in their assignment. Only time will tell.

            Another assignment we will be doing towards the end of the year is an alternative book report over Night. Students will be able to choose their own project to complete over the novel. My CT and I are hoping to see that if the students get to choose their own project, they will be more invested and motivated to do the project.

            Other than the students not staying motivated, the students are behaving rather well. They see me as their teacher and treat me with respect. I am hoping this will continue on when I take over and teach all day.

A Letter to My Mom (Genre Reflection 2)

Dear Mom,

            You always ask me why in the world I want to become a teacher. Adding with an “I thought you wanted to help people” or “you won’t make any money!” Well mom, I will be helping people, just in a different way. I know you want me to become a nurse or doctor to be able to save lives, but that just is not me. I will be helping students find their voice, reach their potential, and hopefully they will go on to become the nurses and doctors. Helping people isn’t always just saving their life, you know. Oh and the money issue, if you think about it, nurses don’t make exactly that much money either for the amount of work they have to do. Teachers are underpaid, but I will get by just fine. Plus, you ALWAYS told me that money doesn’t buy happiness…it just helps sometimes. Anyways, just know that I’ll be happy with this decision. Which goes into your next argument, what happens if I get burnt out like some teachers do? Well so far I see no signs of this, I mean would I plan on going to grad school in this field if there were any indications I wouldn’t like teaching? Probably not. So back to the overall question, why do I want to become a teacher? Okay, so I could give you the stereotypical answer that every future teacher gives, but you’ve heard it before and you still have your doubts. So let me explain differently for you, I was born to be a teacher. It is who I am. I have you to thank for this. You taught me to love literature at a young age, you also taught me to say what is on my mind, and that there are always learning opportunities. So face it, you helped guide me down this path. I mean, if you REALLY wanted me to become a nurse or doctor, you should have raised me a tad differently. Only kidding, you did just fine. I think you should be proud that I am becoming a teacher! Be proud to know that you influenced me in such a way that I want to influence students. Now you know, so you can stop questioning my decision and let me graduate in peace!

I love you,

Sheila