Bringing it all together

·         Review the course goals you wrote about in your first post at the beginning of the semester.

·         What progress have you made on them?

·         What does this do to inform your practice next semester in student teaching?

·         What goals do you still have moving forward?

·         Include overall reflections on what you have learned in this clinical course and on-site this semester.

My days here at ISU are dwindling down, sadly. I have one more clinical setting to experience left, and it is so sad! At the beginning of the semester, I made four goals for myself for this semester that I wanted to work on. My first goal was to increase my confidence in teaching. Overall, I feel 10x more confident this semester than I have in previous semesters. I still have a lot to work on, but I have definitely improved. I feel comfortable teaching a classroom full of students as well as confident that I am teaching them meaningful lessons and have the background knowledge to answer any questions that they may have.

Another goal that I had for myself was to expand upon my teaching abilities. In past semesters, we were only required to implement one math or literacy lesson. This semester we were required to implement a literacy lesson, a science lesson, and a social studies lesson. Holy moly! I did it, and having that experience not only helped me to think about how to plan for all of the different areas of learning, it also increased my confidence because I was able to plan it and implement it well! I know I came up with some creative, meaningful lessons for these students. While I still need a lot more experience before heading out into the teaching world, these lessons definitely helped me to prepare for student teaching next semester.

A third goal that I had was to increase bonds between colleagues. One way that this occurred was through the relationship that I had with my cooperating teacher this semester. Overall, I honestly could not have had a better cooperating teacher, and I wish so badly that she could be my cooperating teacher for student teaching! She believed in me and my abilities, probably more than I did, and this could not have been more helpful to me. She allowed me to take over certain aspects of the day that I was there because she knew that I could handle it. We had many meaningful conversations during our plan time that really helped me to form a bond with her. She trusted me, and her trust and confidence in me only made me realize that I can do it!

My final goal was to work on classroom management. This is something I still struggle with because I have yet to have the opportunity to find my own management skills that work for me; I am normally forced to have to adjust to the management that my CT’s use. Overall, I liked the PBIS system that my school used this semester; I felt it worked better than systems I have seen in the past. I still have a lot to learn when it comes to having my own classroom and managing my own group of students. My CT gave me some great advice though. She told me that I have to find a system that balances what works for me and what works for my students. I will have to change this system every year, because I will have a new group of students every year. However, if I don’t have my management system in place and implemented within the first week of school, I will struggle for the rest of the year; those first few days of school are the ones that mean the most. This really concerned me. At ISU we have learned a million different ways to accommodate for children who need it, to differentiate to reach all of the children in your classroom, different classroom management ideas, guided reading ideas, social studies, science, etc. We have a boatful of knowledge to help us be successful teachers. However, not one teacher has prepared us for what to expect on the first day of school. I went to my CT and asked her how she does it. She said the first days are tough, and you have to immediately inform your classroom about what you expect from them; inform them of the schedule and the ways things work in your classroom. You do a lot of getting to know you activities. She said it takes practice to figure it out, and she offered me a book entitled “The First Days of School,” by Harry and Rosemary Wong. I borrowed it from her and flipped through some of the pages, and wow it was so helpful. It gives me a better idea on how to lay out the first few weeks of school, which we have never really learned about. I think this will help me immensely when I enter student teaching because I am on the “off-track,” so I am teaching in the fall instead of the spring. This is kind of exciting for me because it allows me to get a feel for what the first day of school looks like instead of just kind of entering in the middle of the year.

Overall, I am still working on all four of my goals, and will probably continue to work on these goals even after student teaching comes to an end. I have learned so much this semester, and I am so happy. When I first began my education here at ISU, I planned to get my degree in ECE and business, and end up opening up my own daycare center. While these plans are somewhat still in my head, they have sort of been placed on the back burner for a while. After getting the chance to teach in the school system, I have sort of fallen in love with it. I am excited about getting up extra early on Wednesdays to get to the school; I feel elated walking into the school in my professional teacher clothes; I adore when I walk into the gym and my student’s faces light up to see me; I enjoy the looks of excitement and happiness when they achieve or learn something new. It is a feeling I never thought I would experience because I always had a different plan for myself. I absolutely loved my second grade class this year. They have definitely taught me the meaning of differentiating lessons. They are an interesting group of students who smile and laugh and love to learn. They were a very diverse group of learners, and sometimes it was tough I won’t lie! But every single day, no matter how tough the day was, I walked out of the school with a smile on my face and this feeling of appreciation for opportunity I had. I loved my experience this semester, and it makes me so unbelievably sad that it is coming to an end on Wednesday. I will take all of the knowledge from I have gained not only from my CT, but from my students as well, on to student teaching next semester. I just hope I get 2^nd grade again J

Here’s a peak at the book “The First Days of School” by Harry and Rosemary Wong. I strongly encourage all new teachers to check it out! (It’s selling for .45 at amazon!)

http://www.amazon.com/The-First-Days-School-Effective/dp/0962936065/ref=sr_1_2?

ie=UTF8&qid=1398123110&sr=8-2&keywords=wong+the+first+days+of+school