Switching Out of Takeover

I had such an amazing takeover. It was a lot of work, but I feel like I learned so much about myself and how I want my future classroom to look and feel. I remember in January being so worried about taking over someone else’s classroom for four weeks and being the lead teacher. After doing it, I cannot believe that I ever doubted myself. Throughout the semester I have always considered myself to be a student until now. I have just proven that I am a teacher!

It has been great to see how much my students have learned and accomplished over the semester. I am so sad to have only one more week with them. They have taught me valuable life lessons that I will never forget.

Speaking of those valuable lessons — I got my first phone calls for interviews this past week! I am very excited to start the job search process and feel fully prepared to seek out my first teaching position. Wish me luck!

Last Week

This was my last week of takeover. I cannot believe how fast the last four weeks have flown by! Graduation is just around the corner and I am not ready to say goodbye to my third graders.

I had some really good personal moments with my kids this week. Many of them have made an effort to sit by me at the back table while they work (some in order to get help, others because they just like the company). During this time I am able to talk with them about what’s going on at home, what they’re doing over the weekend and share anything that they ask me about. It’s really rewarding to find out about their families, interests and thoughts about school. As I connect with them, they enjoy school and the classroom more.

These little moments make teaching worthwhile. I’m still learning so much every day. I’m not ready for it to be over.

Resetting

This was my third week of takeover and I am absolutely exhausted. Well… I wasn’t exhausted at the end of the day Monday through Wednesday, but today I am exhausted. It is amazing how one day can be absolutely perfect and the next day can be complete chaos.

Today, my students were incredibly chatty, off-task and irritating. When they weren’t fighting with one another, they were trading bracelets and passing notes. I felt like my head was going to explode with how much discipline I had to do, while still maintaining my composure and the purpose of each lesson. Even still, I made it through the day.

On Wednesday I had a pretty great teaching moment. A student who is constantly a behavior problem was ignoring my instructions to do his work all week. I have started to refuse to send him to the office anymore because I know that he just wants to get out of class. At the end of the day yesterday, I asked him to get out his science folder. When he claimed he lost it, I grabbed it out of his desk. As I grabbed it, about 10 broken pencils fell onto the floor. Not only was his science folder full of incomplete worksheets, but he had also wasted the entire day breaking his supplies (that his mother had recently bought him) into bits and pieces. Fed up with his blatant disrespect for myself and for his school supplies, I told him to go get his agenda book. I grabbed the tape dispenser and taped the broken shrapnel into his agenda book and wrote, “Stephen has had a busy day making these. I hope that he can explain to you why. – Miss S.”  All the students in the classroom became silent. Someone whispered “Oh, that’s bad…” and my student looked at me with absolute terror. I had just made an impact on him.

Even though this week was long and the kids were difficult, I have really come to understand the “starting over” aspect of teaching. Every day, hour, minute and second I am resetting myself to be the best teacher I can be—regardless of what any of the students have done throughout the day. And they know that, which is even cooler. After disciplining a student 10+ times today, she yelled out, “Have a great day, Miss S!” as she was getting on her bus. I was surprised that she was even talking to me, but she made me realize that the students are also resetting themselves with me every day, hour, minute and second that I am their teacher.

Today was tough, but if I made any impact on any student at all—it was a worthwhile day of learning.

Bringing Down the Hammer

This was my second week of student teaching takeover. Today was a shortened week because of Good Friday. I had a difficult time keeping the students focused, so I had to bring down the hammer a little hard. On Monday and Tuesday, the students were chatty, disrespectful and off task. I talked to them after lunch each day and explained that if they couldn’t follow my directions, we would do silent seatwork for the rest of the day. Things did not improve though. I tried having students put their heads down on their desk, ending a fun video lesson because they were talking, taking away their computers, and having silent seats. I talked to my cooperating teacher after school on Tuesday and she told me that I would need to write someone up and send them to the office before the students would really take me seriously. So the next morning I started the day off by telling the students that I had made many attempts to get them to listen to me and that I was done giving them chances. I said that if a student disrupts the class they would be sent to the office. We just don’t have time to waste with the shortened week.

By lunchtime, my teacher had written a student up for threatening another student. I would have written him up, but I didn’t hear the student threaten the other student. Since she was the witness, she had to do the report. Even still, I told the students after lunch, “You see that we are missing a student that was here this morning. I told you that if you don’t follow my directions and do what you are supposed to, you would be sent down to the office. Just because one person has been sent down today doesn’t mean that it won’t become two.” The students did a little bit better that afternoon, but Wednesday and Thursday were back to the same thing. I stopped instruction probably three times to reset the entire classroom of students. I hope that a normal week will help calm them down.

Miss S – Fully Immersed

My first week of takeover went exceedingly well. Monday was a very easy-going day. The students behaved fine—probably because the student who misbehaves the most was absent. On Tuesday, the students were a lot more talkative. At lunch my cooperating teacher mentioned that I would need to change the tone of the classroom if I wanted the next five weeks to go smoothly. We decided that I would take away the student’s computers and games on the carpet since they were not using them appropriately (and were instead talking to people and not getting any work done). The students absolutely hated this punishment—one of them actually said “You can’t do that!” The realization that I was being completely serious really changed the students’ attitudes though.  I reminded the students on Wednesday and Thursday that they needed to earn their games back by showing me that they knew how to make good use of their time. The students got them back on Friday, and used them appropriately throughout the day—making instruction a lot easier.

I have been having a consistent problem with one student in the classroom disrespecting me. I decided to address this issue this week since my cooperating teacher would no longer be in the room to help deal with his rudeness. This student throws papers on my desk when he is done with them, talks back to me, walks away when I am talking to him, rolls his eyes at me, and interrupts my instruction constantly. On Friday when he yelled at me for not picking the tests up that he left on his desk (instead of turning them into me like I asked), I bent down to look him in the eyes and said, “You do not talk to me like that. I am your teacher. You show me no respect and it is unacceptable. The next time you talk to me like that, you will be calling your father on my phone and explaining to him how you treat me.” I have never seen the student look so terrified. I walked away and after about 2 minutes the student came up to me and said, “Miss S, I am so sorry for disrespecting you. I will not do it again. I’m sorry.” I was shocked! I will need to be sure and follow through with my threat next week if he goes back to his old ways though…

Almost Taking Over

This is the last week before my takeover. My cooperating teacher has been slowly leaving me alone in the classroom in preparation for next week. I feel very comfortable with being the only teacher in the room. Some things make me nervous (like teaching difficult math concepts), but I am trying to be as organized and prepared as possible to avoid any problems.

I have started to really buckle down on discipline with students. My cooperating teacher and my supervisor told me at my midterm meeting that the only way my takeover would go smoothly is if I really demonstrate my authority for the first couple of days. I realized that this is important so that my students do not take advantage of me and so that they respect me as a real teacher. Instead of waiting until next week, I decided to start this transition early so that my students are not confused about my expectations when I takeover full time. I think that my students are really getting a clear understanding of my position in the classroom (if they haven’t already).

Quote of the day from third grade: “Mrs. P, are you mad at Miss S? [No…] Then why you makin her do all the work?!” My third graders make me laugh…

Parent Teacher Conferences

Parent-teacher conferences were this week on Thursday night and Friday morning. I was excited to meet my students’ parents and get a glimpse into their lives at home. I was surprised that most parents did not bring their children with them to the conferences. My teacher and I stressed that all the students should come with their parents, but only a handful of them actually attended the conferences.

My cooperating teacher and I knew that several of the conferences would be difficult to manage due to past experiences with some of our students’ parents. It was disappointing that some parents displayed complete apathy when we brought up issues on their child’s report cards. I know that a lot of parents in this district have a difficult time trusting the school system, but I thought that with so many families in my school suffering from poverty, parents would (more likely than not) at least be pushing their children to get a good education and move ahead in life.

I was very discouraged after these meetings with parents. I realized that I can do everything in my power to help my students every day, but they go home and are influenced by their family members who lack an appreciation for school. Sometimes it feels like an uphill battle.

Separating Fact from Fiction

This week we have been having a lot of problems with bullying and lying. We have a special education student in our classroom that told me that a handful of other students were calling him an “idiot” during gym class. I talked to about half of the students who were reported to be doing the bullying and they all said that they never spoke a word to the student during gym class. Another student said “Even if I was making fun of him, I wouldn’t have done it when he could hear me.” Which I thought was a sad, but true point.

I kept an eye on him throughout the week, but he started reporting that other students were pushing him, fighting with him, and calling him names. The tip-off that he was lying was when he started reporting very well behaved and friendly students as doing these things. I did not make the connection that he was lying until this weekend, when I started to piece together all of the incidences. Even though the student was lying, this was not the first time that I heard students being mean to one another.

I do not think that my classroom has fostered a positive community between students. Instead, certain students make it their goal to get others in trouble. I have also seen instances of real bullying, where students make fun of others for not knowing their multiplication facts or outright saying hurtful things (i.e., “I hate you”) when the teacher is not around. I have also caught students stomping on each other’s backpacks, stealing, and physically hurting one another. My teacher sat the students down to try and get them to realize how their actions are hurting the people around them, but I’m pretty sure the message was lost. My teacher said that she used to have time in the day for team-building activities, but that it is not available in third grade. It really disappoints me to see this kind of behavior and I hope to keep working on eliminating it from our classroom.

Glad That’s Over

With ISAT testing all this week, I decided to provide my students with a unit celebrating Dr. Seuss! My third graders were familiar with Dr. Seuss’s books for younger children, but they had never read the more theme-based books in the Dr. Seuss collection. I introduced them to “Oh! The Places You’ll Go” and got them thinking about their futures and where they want to “go” when they grow up.

Students also created new hats for “The Cat in the Hat” and did some research projects to find out more about Theodore Geisel. It was the perfect theme for such a stressful week. My students enjoyed coloring, sharing their work with their classmates, and talking about their future selves.

On the last day of testing I made this bulletin board to show off all of their great work:

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I am so excited to move on from testing and really dig into some fun science, math, social studies, and language arts topics!

Ready for ISAT

This week was filled with ISAT prep work. My teacher and I went through some old ISAT materials that a previous teacher had left in the room and made copies of reading prompts, multiple choice answers, writing prompts, and math problems. My teacher and I individually conferenced with each student and went over the students’ answers/responses to the practice tests. Monday was incredibly frustrating because the students did not take the time to read the story carefully and literally guessed on the multiple choice questions instead of going back to the story and finding the correct answers. I think that conferencing with each student individually really improved their understanding of the test. By Wednesday, most of the students in the class were getting less than three questions wrong on the practice tests (for both reading and math). I was incredibly impressed with their progress.

During our math WIN-time, my teacher and I broke our group of tier-2 students in half and covered a wide variety of concepts that the students had been struggling with. This was our last-ditch effort to help the students get a bit more math practice in before Monday. I was very excited to take over part of the WIN group. I was able to handle the group of 7 students easily and I think that our review helped clear up some questions about time elapse, place value, and counting money. We have two students in our WIN group who are in special education classrooms. It was a great experience for me to teach these two students without my cooperating teacher monitoring the students. Both students seemed to integrate themselves into the two groups well and stayed involved throughout the entire lesson.  I am excited to continue working with my RTI students for the rest of the school year!