Also, to counter Mr. Rotramel's photos, here's a cat that is so much more full of awesome than all of his: 

Official Response One

Any and all names used for this post are pseudonyms and used only for the purpose of this blog.  The pseudonyms will alternate, so no student or person will be tied to the same pseudonym for more than one post.

So far my practicum experience has been fairly solid and I feel like this semester is going to be a great experience.  One challenge I am having so far is that my class…is too well behaved.  I know this seems like a silly challenge, but it is the complete opposite of most of my other placement experiences.  My teacher is great with classroom management, but since the class is an Honor’s English class, the students come there to learn.  I am not going to say they never get off-task, but the teacher did such an excellent job with precautionary actions that she does not have to be a reactive classroom manager.  I still get enough of a chance to observe a veteran teacher work with students who like to test boundaries in my Cooperative Education position, so this allows me to pay more attention to students without those distracting factors.

My Cooperating Teacher, referred to from this point on as Ms. Teller, has been extremely helpful and given a lot of great advice for my future as a teacher.  There are times when I still feel like an outlier in the classroom, but we are working me into being more involved in the classroom with different activities. Ms. Teller has informed me our major goal for this particular class is to make sure I am ready to completely take over it either before or when the student teaching semester begins.  Even though these are minor activities, I have already started taking attendance for the class I am observing and I am also entering grades for all of her classes, which I really appreciate because it is allowing me to become more familiar with names and faces on her other class rosters.

One of Ms. Teller’s other classes has two transfer students (who I will refer to as Ben and Jerry) from a different school where I currently work as a Cooperative Education student.  I foresee some minor challenges with these students when I take over the class next semester due to my own role change.  Previously they had known me as roughly the equivalent of a teacher’s assistant/Para, but when next semester comes, I will be a student teacher and I wonder if that will cause some confusion/friction with the teacher-student relationship I will have with Ben and Jerry.  I feel like Ms. Teller is going to support me as well as she can to help avoid any potential challenges with these two students (or any others), but it is still something I am going to keep in mind.  While I am unable to find any information on my specific problem (even if it may be imagined), I am going to try to follow the usual tips like these: http://www.teachingvillage.org/2011/11/14/10-tips-for-a-great-first-impression-with-students-by-brad-patterson/ when I start getting to know my new classrooms.  I feel like one of the most important things I can do is start “dressing the part” of a teacher.  I have already started dressing up better than I had in my placements in previous years.  I wear a dress shirt, slacks, and a tie.  I still do not to wear dress shoes, mostly because I’ll be stuck in them for roughly 30 hours a week and tennis shoes just work better for bouncing back and forth between three different schools.  I am doing my best to start looking and acting “the part” of a teacher.

      I ended up receiving “the teacher look” the other day when I ran into two of my students at a local mall.  All of you know what look I’m talking about.  It’s the look you would give a teacher that in one glance said “Wait a second; you aren’t supposed to exist outside of that big brick building.”  The student even yelled out to me and I walked over and chatted with them for a short while, but it felt so silly to be on the other side of “the teacher look.”  This is just one of the first times I’ve realized that I am finally becoming a greater presence in the classroom and I find this extremely exciting.  My students also saw me in shorts and this may be the first step to complete anarchy in the classroom, so I guess I should never take a step into that outside world during the light of day.  Someone please save me from myself.

Practice Post

So far it has been an interesting experience at my placement school.  I am still going through the process of learning students’ names, but my cooperating teacher is helping with this by having me hand out papers and other comparable activities.

I am working with an Honor’s English Eighth grade class and it is amazing to see the difference between the Honor’s classroom I work with at this school and the classrooms I work with in my Co-Op position.  There are many similarities, but both communities seem to support the educational process in different ways, but this also may be the difference between the tracking (either intentional or unintentional) that tends to happen with “higher level” classes.

The students seem to be getting used to my presence in the classroom, although they also seem to forget I am there when I am not walking around the room.  It is kind of amazing the different conversations that I get to eavesdrop on (innocently of course, they just don’t really have a low volume button, do they?)  I do prefer to actively participate and walk around the room.  I get rather antsy when I am not doing something productive, as we have moved past the days of being able to just sit and watch our students.

As the genius that I am, I already showed my students how infallible I am when I chose to staple my finger while we were posting their relationship-building activity on the wall.  Thankfully, there was only one student with me when I did it, and she didn’t laugh, or at least not vocally, but I can almost guarantee everybody knows what happens.  Thankfully, if everybody knows already (there goes my imaginary audience again), they chose to be polite and only laugh while my back was turned.

For personal goals, my most immediate one is to learn my student’s names and simply get to know them better.  I am very close with this goal and am actively working toward it, but it is definitely going to be an ongoing process.  I find that it is a bit harder for me to memorize names that are unique and not a part of my own cultural background than it is to memorize typically “WASP”names, but that's a good part of the fun as well: getting exposed to new cultures.

I am going to start discussing potential unit plan ideas with my cooperating teacher, but I am placing more of a focus right now on making my presence known in the classroom.  I feel like getting to know my students is going to be the best way of getting myself ready for next semester.  My cooperating teacher is really great and seems to already have at least a basic overall plan for the semester, so it should not be much of a challenge to get my unit plan figured out.

As far as long term goals are concerned, I would just like to make sure that I become a noticeable presence within the classroom and hope that I can help some of these students find a more unique perspective for reading that they did not have prior to the start of class.  I do not think we are doing a novel study in this semester, but I really look forward to participating with some of the classes who will most likely be doing some as the semesters move forward.  I also want to be as involved in the day-to-day process as I can be.

This is the start of my professional blog.  Hopefully throughout the process of this project we will see some professional development and growth in my musings.