This week was quite the eventful week for me as a student teacher! I have my first formal observation from my supervisor, had the students take their first exam I helped create and prepare them for, and had my first in-service day on Friday.

First thing’s first, my observation. Thankfully my observation went well and my supervisor was pleased with my middle school capabilities, engaging lesson, and dedication…my 150 students were a completely different story that day. I’m fully aware that teaching has its ups and its downs, that goes to say for anything in life but Wednesday I wanted to cry and jump for joy all at the same time…for 2 whole, long hours. My supervisor was supposed to come and observe my 5^th hour class, which from the start of the morning I was pretty nervous about. The students were just ready for their long weekend ahead of them, were on sugar-highs from all the valentine’s snacks they had been exchanging, and 3^rd and 4^th hour gave me a preview of the rest of my day. By the time I got to 5^th hour, my supervisor came in, and the kids came in with all the energy, tension, and silliness enough to share with everyone in the school. Some issues happened at lunch with a few groups of girls and of course those ladies were in my 5^th hour class, some boys were just off their rocker and refused to take part in any activity that was going on or planned, and the rest of the class wanted nothing to do with a review game planned for their exam the next day. Again, I know everyone has their good and bad days and I don’t blame my students for being at a different place than I was Wednesday. I was ready to review and prepare them for an exam, they were ready start the long weekend and want nothing to do with an exam. I had to pause much of the review game and lesson in order to collect my students and give them a pep talk, a respect talk, and a “this is unacceptable talk” all at the same time. I felt like one of those puppet dolls of which each limb is connected by a string, getting pulled in all different directions. I wanted to impress my cooperating teacher and my supervisor since I was so proud of the game I had planned, I wanted to give the students enough time so we could get through as much of the game so I could see if anything needed to be re-reviewed for tomorrows exam, and I wanted to cry at the chaos that they brought in with them. I feel like that was my first real experience trying to keep the class calm and functioning, keep my lesson going for my supervisor, and keep myself from thinking “I cannot do this”. I learned that some days you just have to roll with the punches and stop and talk to the students, figure out what is going on, and make it into a learning experience. I got through as much of the review game as I could have, but most importantly I laid down the expectations for the students, which gave them the chance to see me as a constant authority figure in their lives for the semester. My students finally got to see me equal to my cooperating teacher, and that couldn’t have made me happier to know I earned their respect and they saw mine. Lucky for me the rest of the day gave me a ton of practice with pep talks, respect conversations, and expectation discussions with the students, and more importantly I love the lessons my students teach me that books and videos cannot (i.e. how to handle everything when your lesson doesn’t go as planned due to extenuating circumstances the students bring in).

The in-service day was extremely beneficial. My cooperating teacher got the chance to discuss more what she and the other science teachers want to do with the science curriculum (spiral vs. segmented), and we all got to talk as a school on standards based grading and how to move toward that type of grading. I had the chance to hear both sides, for and against, standards based grading. My opinion on standards based grading is a bit split momentarily. I am all for grading students on their effort, contributions, participation, lead up work, but the fact that standards based grading also means students should not receive zeros for work that is not completed or turned in is what I disagree with. I believe that students need to also get penalized for assignments that they do not turn in; otherwise their grade may not accurately reflect their understanding and grasp of content. Additionally, teachers will have a skewed perspective of how the class is actually doing.

Ms. P

Every Wednesday morning our school has a late start for the students and a morning staff meeting at 7:25am for everyone at the school to get together and discuss school goals, new district implementations, and allow for the same subject teachers to meet and look over assessments, test scores, individual, team, and personal objectives, etc. My middle school placement is in a 6^th grade science classroom. I’m not exactly sure how other middle schools design their curriculum but my middle school has each grade (6-8) focus on a specific science. 6^th graders focus on Earth and Space science, 7^th graders focus on life science (introduction to biology, and 8^th grade focuses on chemical and physical sciences. With NGSS becoming the expected curriculum to accompany science lessons and teachings the teachers who have been teaching this way for years were now forced to discuss whether they plan to spiral their curriculum or keep it segmented by grades and topics.

It was a difficult discussion to start at this meeting since the teachers were not expecting to be having this conversation. Should the spiral curriculum be their path of choice they must redesign their lessons, as the spiral curriculum would take place August 2015. This means that for teachers, like my cooperating teacher, who has participated in plenty of professional field development courses in earth science, has ample personal experience and stories to include for students, may have to swap many of those to include time for biology, chemical, and physical science introductions and basics at the 6^th grade level. It makes it even more difficult as three teachers need to decide by the end of the year, and not all 3 teachers share the same opinions on whether to go spiral or not.

My own opinions would be to spiral the curriculum slowly. Perhaps start in 6^th grade next year in order to get a grasp on how to implement the various units/topics, obtain resources for the teacher(s) to use, and 6^th graders have just entered the school so it would not effect the students in the upper grades, and by the time the 6^th graders who underwent a spiral curriculum moved onto 7^th grade, that would be the next spiral to occur. Additionally, I know that with the PARCC exam it will be testing on various areas of science, so 6^th-8^th grade will be expected to know more than just their grade focus at my middle school. This would benefit the students and would ease the spiral curriculum into the district without every teacher in science stressing over the redesigning phrase.

Ms. P

It’s my second week officially in to my placement and it’s feeling great! This week there was a lot of focus during “team planning” regarding parent teacher conferences and how to tackle them this semester. Team planning is a 30-45 minute time teachers get to meet with the rest of the teachers in their grade level and discuss any student issues, conflicts, and assist to keep everyone in the loop. Parent teacher conferences are coming up at the end of February and the issue arising is that each teacher only gets 15 minutes with any parent that shows up, not allotting much time to discuss any of the high flyers and students who are at risk. It is unclear what the turnout will be each year during the conferences and which parents will be attending. The 6^th grade team came up with an organized method to help plan which student(s)/families the team feels need to be met with by creating a shared spread sheet and listing off the students and reason(s) to be met with. Since the team meets everyday during team planning period (2^nd period) they have arranged time to include a team parent teacher conference to meet and discuss with more time and detail each Wednesday and Thursday. This allows them to meet on Monday’s, Tuesday’s and Friday’s to discuss anything regarding the classrooms, conflicts, and agendas and allows for parent meeting time as a team two days of the week. I really liked this idea because when meeting with certain students, more time needs to be allotted to go into more detail, concerns, and make plans for the at-risk students. Additionally, it’s important for the parents of those students to meet with the students teachers, all together, so more information can be discussed, more ideas for success can be implemented, and all concerns can be addressed in one meeting.

I also had the opportunity to go with my cooperating teacher to one of her assessment and grading committees that she is a part of. I have to say that this was one of the most eye opening meetings I had been to. The committee had asked all teachers, anonymously, to break down how their classes were graded. The teachers all had to mark whether their students grades were weighted or based on total points, and how much percent they planned to have each category worth, and then calculate how much each category was actually worth. The committee looked at all the answers together on a spreadsheet, and I was appalled to see how inconsistent and unfair some teachers were (and most did not realize it until really creating that anonymous sheet). Some teachers we saw had their grades based on total points, and 70% of the points were coming from tests/quizzes. What this meant was if any student failed one test, they already dug themselves in a hole pretty hard to come out of. We also had some teachers whose grades were 80% based on homework. The issue we saw with this was that those students were receiving grades not entirely based off their performance, because tests and quizzes only accounted for 10%. Overall, it really showed me how important it is for teachers to keep their students grading procedures consistent and fair in order to see the most student growth, needs, and to get the most deserved grade.

Ms. P