handwritten on May 26, 2015
Upon graduation, it became increasingly evident to me that the hard work was only beginning. Alas, it was not time for relaxing but time to begin substitute teaching as well as job searching. I must say that I am now prouder than ever to have received my teaching certificate from the state of Pennsylvania. The interview process to score a job in the state of Pennsylvania is nothing short of challenging, exhausting and sometime frustrating. Unlike other careers, there is not simply one interview but often four or five rounds of interviews before you are even considered as a potential candidate for a particular school district. Thousands of teachers apply for one or two teaching positions for...
handwritten on March 1, 2015
I finally had an excellent day this past Friday. I think one of the most difficult aspects of this placement has been this idea of "co-teaching" correctly. Up until this semester, I had always heard of the various forms of co-teaching but never before had I found myself in a co-teaching placement. I had always felt, in my heart that co-teaching would be somewhat challenging because it involves multiple personality types working together to deliver a successful lesson. I was certainly right in my thinking.
I have not been as confident this semester as I was last semester. Perhaps this is because I am working with middle schoolers. However, I think the major difference has been trying to...
handwritten on February 19, 2015
For thirty to forty minutes every morning, I am required to teach "vocabulary" to a group of 26 8th grade students. Challenging? Yes. Particularly because we are supposed to stay on the same ten words for at least 7 or 8 days. Early on, I decided that this was no longer just going to be a vocabulary class but this was going to be a "thinking space." It was going to be a 30-minute period where some way, some how, I talked about this vocabulary using the context of the world. This month is black history month and so I have been creating a series of culturally relevant lessons that deal wtih issues in America. One of my words this week was "hypocrisy." I made this statement:
We have freedom...
handwritten on February 12, 2015
I have not yet written about this particular semester. In some cases, I think the lack of writing has not been because I have nothing to say. Rather, it is because I am not quite sure how to say what I want to say. This semester has been extremely challenging in the sense that I am not longer dealing with elementary school students. Rather, I am dealing with middle schoolers who are not always interested in what you are talking about and come from broken homes and unimaginable poverty. Just today, I had one of my most ineresting teacher moments. I had planned for our intervention vocabulary lesson to conduct a game of Bingo with my students. Only two minutes into setting up the game did I...
handwritten on December 15, 2014
I did want to take some time to reflect upon my experience differentiating instruction for my students this semester. I always joke around with my classmates about this topic of differentiation. During my college courses, we were always told to differentiate instruction because this is how to make differences in the academic lives of many of your students rather than just targeting a single student. However, the word differentiation is so easy to say. The actual act of providing differentation is what is difficult.
I was lucky during my second grade experience in the sense that I had students from a variety of different backgrounds. Thus, differentiation was a part of my...
