What a Night!

Parent Teacher Conferences – a teacher’s day never ends.  I got to watch about 8 conferences in one night.  We had a whole day of school then conferences started at 4 pm until 8 pm.  It was so interesting to see and watch how my cooperating teacher goes about the conference.   For the most part I thought the conferences went very well and I learned a lot from them.  Before each parent came in my co-op would show me her notes on the student and what she was going to discuss with the parents.  I think the most important thing I learned from the experience is to stay positive.  There are always going to be difficult parents or difficult students that you are dealing with, however, it is both your job and in your best interest to keep positive and try to find the silver lining.  My co-op gave me the advice to always start and end with something positive about the child.  She likes to call it the “compliment sandwich,” where the point to discuss for improvement is “sandwiched” between two compliments.  This is a good way to address the problem but in a positive manner.

I was also lucky to see a mix of parents during conferences.  Both moms and dads came, sometimes alone, sometimes together, and there were a range of emotions.  I saw one “bad” conference where the parent just didn’t seem happy with any of the things we said about the student.  It was just so sad to see my co-op say such great things about this child and the parent didn’t seem to care at all.  Other than that, most of the parents went away from conferences happy.  I was surprised and happy to see some fathers at the conferences.  It is so rare to see this, but in all the cases where the father came they were interested and concerned in what we had to say about their child.  It was a long night but one that I learned so much from and will never forget.

Struggle with Authority

Language Arts has been a struggle this week.  We are doing Lit Groups with the book The Rats of NIHM. For Lit Groups some students switch classes based on reading ability.  I have the middle reading group.  For our class we split students  into two different literature circles and my cooperating teacher and I each take a group daily.  However, regardless of which group I am in, the students are much more off task and noisy than when working with my co-op.  I know that this is somewhat normal because I am not 100% viewed as a teacher with these students, but I am not sure how to proceed at this point.  One group is much worse than the other, and it is always particular students, but I don’t know if I should be separating students or assigning seats, or to just keep at it and little by little it’ll get better.  Additionally, there are always students (always boys) who do not write things down on their papers.  When approached about this they say they already knew that, or it wasn’t interesting or surprising to them.  I am working on getting the students to see me as another teacher and treat me like they would my co-op.  I think with time it will all work out  but it’s just something I have been thinking about this week.

Valentine’s Day Party

Today was an interesting day, the students had a half-day because of conferences and tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.  Because of this, the whole school has an hour at the end of the day for a class party.  The room moms are in charge of organizing this event.  I have never seen such an extravagant school party in my life.  The kids got to hand out valentines and eat some of their candy before the moms arrived.  In addition to that candy, there were cupcakes, cookies, chocolate covered pretzels, juice boxes and more.  When the moms came in they brought a “photo booth” and tons of games and prizes.  The students were all about the room playing games and making things.   The hour went by quickly but the students were so hyped on the food I was glad it was a half day.  It was fun to see the kids have a break to relax and play with each other instead of doing work all day.

A Struggle in Math

At this point I have been able to see the students growing and improving in many ways, which has been exciting.  I have been working one on one with some of the low students in math.  One student really hates math and struggles with many topics.  We are just starting probability and she does pretty well with that.   She hates math so much that she tries in every way not to do it – whether it is by going to the bathroom during class or trying to get me to write for her.  She is very comfortable with me and as great as that is, she seems to be taking advantage of it at times.  She has stressed to me so many times that she hates to do things with the class, like whole group lessons, because they go too fast for her and then she is lost and confused.  But working with her one on one she is able to go at her pace and show me what she knows.  I am learning how difficult it is to work with students with such a variety of abilities.  Math is especially difficult with my class because we have a handful of kids who should be in the higher group and understand concepts quickly.  Then we also have a large group of very low students who struggle a lot.  Unfortunately, there are often such ranges in classes and it is difficult to meet everyone’s needs.