What makes a teacher?

This semester was not easy for me by any means. There were times when dealing with troublesome students and parents that really made me question if I was going into the right field or not. What I always seemed to come back to and ask myself was; why am I doing this? What makes this something that will be more rewarding in the end than not? I always found myself answering with “it’s the kids who have ‘ah-ha’ moments, it’s the kids who never say a word but walk into your classroom and smile or simply say hello, or the kids who ask if you could talk to them after class just because they need someone to talk to and they trust you.” It’s those kids that make this profession worth it. The fact that I am able to help and influence so many kids throughout my career is a blessing and makes all of the hardships and helicopter, finger pointing parents and students worth it. I’ve known since the third grade this was what I was meant to do, and though it might be hard sometimes, I still am confident that this is exactly what I should be doing with my life and exactly where I should be. This semester has helped to give me even more confidence in my decision to become and educator and made me want to strive to continually learn of ways to improve myself and my classroom.

This semester has really shaped my teaching philosophy and classroom management style. I have a much better understanding of what it means to control a classroom and the variety of techniques I can use to do so. I understand now the importance of establishing the respect of your students before relaxing and having fun. I also gained an understanding this semester of the effect communication has on the classroom. I think communication is key to dealing with student behavior issues and I’ve learned the power of a phone call home.

Classroom management isn’t the only thing I’ve learned this semester though. I’ve learned how to continually assess my students and adapt my lessons on the spot depending on the information I receive throughout the lesson on my students. I have a better understanding now of how to approach various lessons and how students learn. A strategy that I’ve noticed shows up often in my approach is constantly finding time to work with students individually. Throughout the lesson students are given time to work independently, this is when I take advantage of the down time and meet with students individually to assess their progress and use this to clarify any misconceptions individually or make note to clarify them as a group. I also then take the information I’ve gathered and use it to adjust the next portion of my lesson. I use it to decide how quickly to move with the next material and how many examples should be covered as a group, in pairs, or individually.

Another technique I’ve found I use often is collaboration/discussion. My classroom is loud, students are constantly talking and collaborating. I think this is key to learning; students should be able to discuss mathematics and the critical thinking involved in it. If a student is able to explain how to solve a problem to someone else, this solidifies their own knowledge. This works for me because this gets students actively participating and creates a more welcome atmosphere for students. My students aren’t afraid to make mistakes and are willing to learn from them together as a class. This, in my opinion, leads to a deeper understanding of key ideas and more critical thinking.

Overall, this semester was filled with so many more learning experiences than I could have ever imagined. And I’ve walked away with so many more teaching techniques than what I started the semester with. I couldn’t have asked for a better support team and I definitely could not have accomplished as much without them. 

Learning to let other's speak

With this next unit, my placement partner and I decided to try and co-teach the lessons. We also decided to use guided notes and start the chapter off with an activity. The best part of all of this...we chose to throw all of these changes at the students on a half day that just so happened to be PJ day and the day my placement partner had his last observation by the COE. Needless to say it was a fiasco! But man did me and my partner learn a lot about what we needed to change for our other class before we threw all those things at them. I also learned that I have a very VERY hard time letting other people speak, I tend to want to take over the lesson and present that material how I want without letting my partner know what's going on. This lead to quite a bit of confusion at first because though we both knew the activity we were doing, we took it in a completely different direction. This just made our first day that much more confusing to students and meant we had that much more to address before presenting the lesson to our other class.

Learning for our first fiasco we decided to change the following:

1. I needed to learn to let my placement partner teach. This meant that I needed to hold my tongue when he's talking and not interrupt him because most likely what I have to say is what he's going to say it just takes him a little longer to actually say it. We also needed to tell students that we're trying something new (co-teaching) and help them understand that we're going to make mistakes and we're learning how to co-teach and it's not going to be perfect.
2. We needed to introduce the guided notes at the beginning of the hour and warn students about them. We also needed to demonstrate to students how to fill in the guided notes. We decided this meant that one of us (me) would fill out the note on the ELMO with students while the other wrote on the board.
3. We needed to get on the same page about the activity and what it was we wanted to students to do. This meant putting together a worksheet that outlined these things. It also meant that we needed to do the lesson which the activity covered BEFORE doing the activity (the opposite of what we did initially). 

Once we had all of these changes plotted out and ready to go we came into our other class quite a bit more prepared than our initial class and with the hope that it would be much less of a fiasco. Especially since we were both being observed by our content supervisor...Now I'm sure you're asking, "Welllllllll! How'd it go?!?!?!?" I'm glad to report, it went great!

First of all, we did the lesson the activity covered the day before. This was first of all because of how horribly the activity and lesson went the other way around with our other hour. And also because we didn't want to give a lesson the day before spring break and felt the activity would be more engaging for students. Once we presented the lesson to students we were a bit worried because nearly every student seemed to really understand the lesson and we didn't know what this would mean for their engagement in the activity the next day.

Our activity dealt with fractions and decimals and converting them to percents. Students were first split into groups of two or three. Each group was then given the worksheet along with a cup full of (fake) coins. Each cup contained a dollars worth of the following coin values: quarters, dimes, nickels, and seven pennies. First we worked with students to make sure they knew how many of each coin value it took to make a dollar 4 quarters, 10 dimes, 20 nickels, 100 pennies). Next we took that and worked through the "Quarters" portion of the worksheet which had students first find the fraction used to represent one of the four quarters it takes to make a dollar. Then come up with this coin value in regards to the dollar amount (25/100) and finally the decimal and percentage representation of this. 

Once students understood this section and what we were asking them to do in the other sections we let them go and explore on their own. Since we were worried students would rush through the worksheet without thinking about it we made sure to tell them that it wasn't a race to finish the worksheet but more of an investigation to test their understanding and that they should work together to complete the worksheet. This was really important I think, because it forced students to work together and not simply take a portion of the change and work on their own. It was really neat to see the students actually physically using the change in the activity too because in all honesty the students didn't NEED the change to complete the worksheet but they chose to use it so they had something to manipulate and see. 

Me and my placement partner went around and asked students questions throughout their exploration to make sure they were understanding the activity and to gauge their understanding of the material and the underlying concepts. This activity proved to be a big success, every single student was able to answer our questions any way they were asked, they were able to explain their thinking, they were able to work collaboratively to understand the activity and concepts, and finally they had fun! Students were very engaged from the beginning of the lesson until about the last 20 minutes of class. I think this was because many students finished the activity early and didn't have anything else to work on. This is something that I would like to work on more in my activity structures. How do I create an activity that's long enough for my students to complete in the time allotted but also not discouraging and still is engaging? This is something that I plan on working on and collaborating with other educators on to figure out what works best for me and best for my students. 

Overall, I think being able to be observed and then have a coaching session about how our lessons/activities/etc went has been really helpful. I know I'm really hard on myself and tend to think that the lesson didn't go nearly as well as it actually did. And to sit down and take a step back and see the lesson written out by an observer and see the engagement level has been really helpful. It shows me where I need to focus more attention because there was lesson engagement and what I'm currently doing well. I think it's important for me as an educator to take the time to reflect on my lessons, even when it's not required of me, so that I have a better understanding of my strengths, weaknesses, and where I can grow the most. This semester has taught me so much about myself and my teaching style and I cannot wait to have my own classroom, to learn more about myself as a teacher, and to try new things. 

Observing and Learning

I think it's important to take the time to go and observe other teachers teaching styles and methods of instruction. This helps us grow as educators and opens us up to different ideas, which is really important. This past week I observed the geometry teacher at my school and was able to see how her approach to the classroom was different. She started the class off by writing the "I can.." statement on the board for the lesson of the day. This is very similar to what I do in my classroom but in my classroom I have the students create the "I can..." statement. After this she went through the lesson using google docs that the students had created the day before. The students had gone home and found proofs of a geometric property they were working on as a class. These proofs were found online and were suppose to be proofs that made the most sense to the students. Once the students posted the proofs to a google doc and shared it with the class they came in the next day to present the proof they found to the class and walk through the proof together. This was interesting to me because the students lead the class in a way. They were able to find something online that helped them make more sense of the topic at hand and then present this to the class. This is really helpful for the class to see what helps other students understand a concept in hopes that this might help them understand it better as well. The remainder of the class was the discussion of the proofs and tying this back to the topic for the day.

After observing this course and how it was run I had the teacher tell me about her thoughts of what teaching is, what our roles are as educators, and her view of the students. This was really interesting when looking back on the way the classroom was run. She viewed her role in the classroom as more of a 'coach' which was clearly visible in how we saw her 'give' control over to the students and allowed them to explore the concepts she presented in their own way but coached them through the process, clarifying any misconceptions. She said she see's that each student comes into the classroom with a different amount of talent and it's her job to form a classroom where each students' talent. She also said she viewed mathematics as like doing an experiment. This is evident in her classroom structure as well when we look at how she has each student explore a different means of proving one concept. She allows student to find other's "experiments" and discover if this type of experimenting makes sense to them and learn why this works for them as well.

This whole experience was eye opening to me because I had never thought to run my classroom through google docs and student presentations of found proofs. I think this is something that only works with very small class sizes (this class only had 4 students) and advanced students who are able to be held accountable for this proof search and presentation. Having students explore others' proofs would be something I might like to implement in my own classroom.

Discovery through Orange Peels

Today was by far the most excited I've been all semester about giving a lesson. The lesson was covering the surface area and volume of spheres. Kind of a tricky lesson if you want to do it correctly and not simply give students the formulas, which I think is ridiculous and would much rather take the risk of students not following the 'discovery' of the formula versus simply giving it to them. To me, it's important that students see where the formula is coming from and make connections from the formulas they already know to the new ones in the lesson of the day. That being said, before yesterday I had no idea how to do this with the formulas for surface area and volume of spheres. I decided my best option was to google activities on the discovery of the formulas. By doing this I found what I wanted to do; for the volume formula, which I chose to do first.

I decided to lead the discovery by starting with what we had used the previous two days to find the formulas for other 3D figures; the volume formula for a cylinder. From here I constructed an example on the board of a cylinder and a sphere with the same height and radius. I then label the height of the cylinder, and the radius of both the cylinder and sphere. My students then came up with the formula they already knew for the cylinder which I wrote on the board. Next, I told students to keep this in mind as we watched the following YouTube video dealing with actual objects representing the cylinder and sphere I drew in my example. Throughout the video I stopped to ask students questions to make connects to our example on the board. Initially we stopped to talk about what the black tick marks on the cylinder were breaking the cylinder into and after pausing here I told students to also keep this in mind as we continued.

We watched as the volume (water) of the sphere was poured into the cylinder. Students then noted that the volume filled up two of the three sections the cylinder was broken into. I asked students what this would mean for the formula we already know for the volume of a cylinder. They said this mean that the volume of the sphere was 2/3 the volume of the cylinder (yayy! exactly what I wanted students to conjecture/discover). Next, together we worked through the algebra of replacing what was the value h in the cylinder formula in terms of the radius of the sphere. Students got a little tripped up on the more complex math of these steps but once I had a student come up and explain the steps most (if not all) of the class caught on.

Link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLyQddyY8ik

It should be noted that initially I was confused on how to go from the video to the formula I knew for the volume of the sphere. Once I presented this to my placement partner, Josh and we talked through what I was thinking, Josh had an Epiphany and realized the connection (the algebra portion of the discovery). There also was a joke along the way in the algebra about "how many R's ARE there?" or something of the sorts which I caught and laughed at and students caught on and we all enjoyed a good laugh together.

After I felt students understood this, we moved onto the really fun part of my lesson, which I was super stoked about all morning, surface area. This activity involved an orange, a piece of paper, a marker, and team work. Before even handing out the materials I first reviewed with students the formula for the area of a circle. Once we decided that the formula was pi*r^2 and not 2*pi*r (after much debate) I decided students were ready to move forward with the activity, students were told to work with their table partners on this activity. The basic steps of the activity are covered in the pictures below but generally it goes as follows: trace the circle four times onto your sheet of paper (one student holds the orange while one traces), next talk about the area of the circles and what relationship the circle has to the sphere (same radii), after this is solidified I had students peel their oranges. It's recommended that students break the peels into the smallest pieces they can (not ridiculously small but not large), this helps with the next step which is placing the peels into the circles that the students traced from their oranges. At this point some groups started working faster/slower than others so I gave students the directions for the next step and had them try and use what they knew (area formula for circles) to find a formula about the surface area of our 'sphere'. I walked through the class to check the progress of my students whether that be in fitting the peels into the circles or finding the formula.

I told students that they needed to remember their circles they traced from the orange were not going to be perfect, thus how the peels fit into the circles was not going to perfect but should be very close. Students were also told that their four circles 'should' be the same size (or very close) since they're coming from the same sphere. Once every group was done, every group was able to come up with the formula for the surface area of the sphere, 4*pi*r^2. I had one student come up to the projector and use my 'set of peels' to walk her classmates through WHY this works and how it worked. I could not believe how well my students understood this portion of the lesson and was extremely impressed with the students' explanation of the activity, how it worked, and why it worked. Needless to say but the end of the activity I was feeling like a proud mama bear because my students not only took away from the activity exactly what I wanted them to but they gained a deeper understanding of the why behind the math, had fun doing so, and were able to do all of this without their safety net of a PowerPoint which simply gives them the formulas and examples. I was able to create a lesson where students worked together, discovered, had fun, and still took notes**! What an accomplishment!

**For this chapter, the students are putting together flip-books with drawings of each 3D shape, the names, and the formulas for surface area and volume all in one place. This is where students took their notes for this lesson along with a separate sheet of paper where they wrote the examples I gave them once the formulas were found.

The following are the step-by-step pictures of the second activity:
Step One:

Step Two: 

Step Three:

Note that once you peel half the orange you should be able to fill two of your circles with peel.

Step Four: 

Ta-dah! Once the whole orange is peeled, all four circles should be filled with the peel.

Overall, I'm so proud of my students, myself, and how well this lesson went and am happy to share any lesson materials with anyone who would like them. I hope if you choose to do this lesson that it goes as smoothly for you as it did for me! :)

Wrapping Up

This week I wrapped up my unit with my sixth and seventh graders. This unit has been such a learning experience for me. First of all I cannot believe that I just TAUGHT actual students a whole chapter of math content. Holy FREAKING cow. This is what I've known my whole life that I wanted to do and this is what I've been working my butt off for five years to do with my life. The sense of excitement I get from knowing how close I am to being a certified teacher is out of this world and the pride I get from how well my first ever chapter went is ridiculous. I could not have asked to be placed in a better school nor have better students to be my so called guinea pigs for my first teaching experience. I didn't expect to be so thrilled to be in a middle school let alone look forward to waking up every day and going to school to touch the young minds of my students. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about how much I love the career path I've chosen for myself and everything that comes with it.

It blows my mind how receptive and open my students were to a new teacher coming into their classroom and just taking over and teaching them material that they'd never seen before. To me, that's a terrifying amount of responsibility, especially having no experience doing so before. The students were so helpful to my first 'learning to teach' experience and gave me great feedback about what worked for them and what didn't. And through this I figured out how good I am at gauging students understanding simply by reading body language. I think this was one of the biggest things that helped convince me that I'm going the right direction with my life. I feel the best teachers come with a 'feel' and so called 'nack' for teaching and I'd like to think that with teaching my first ever lesson I found my 'nack' and 'feeling' for teaching; and what an amazing feeling that was.

I guess I should probably start blogging more specifics about my lessons and gushing about my love for teaching a little less. I'll give it a try...

My lesson was over geometric figures and was the first time that many of my students learned any sort of geometry (or at least the first time they learned the figures as specifically as I taught them). The first section covered the basic vocab: Point, Line, Plane, Line Segment, Ray, and Congruent. Students seemed to grasp this lesson pretty well and when they came to class the second day I was able to ask them to come up with real life examples of each and got some very creative responses (Line: the equator, Line Segment: a flag pole). The next lesson (section 2) covered angles (acute, obtuse, straight, right, supplementary angles, and complementary angles), the students struggled the most with supplementary and complementary angles but I was able to give them a helpful "reminder" that straight angles had 180 degrees so supplementary angles add to 180, this seemed to help. They also struggled with reading the protractor, I gave them steps to finding the measure of angles when reading the protractor and those seemed to help but worst case students ended up counting off the "fives" between the rays of the angle. Section 3 was the longest section of the chapter and proved to be the one I struggled with teaching the most. It covered parallel, perpendicular, skew, transversals, and angle relationships formed when a transversal intersects two parallel lines. The first four terms weren't too tricky for students (especially since many had seen them before) but the angle relationships were the most difficult for students and for one hour I ended up having to reteach that portion of the less the next day because they didn't understand it the first time and I was too rushed the first time to do teaching it justice. When I retaught this to second hour I did a much better job of explaining the material using vertical and adjacent angles (which we covered with parallel and perpendicular). And because I knew what not to do for third hour I was able to not have to reteach the lesson for them.

The final two sections on angle measure sum of triangles, quadrilaterals, and polygons and congruent polygons went very well. I did an activity with each class dealing with finding the angle sum of triangles using a straight angle and ripping off two angles of a triangle to lie along the straight angle and find the three angles along the straight angle fit perfectly (aka add to 180, or the measure of a straight angle). (See my other blog post for more on this). Students seemed to really enjoy the activity and hopefully with my next chapter I'll be able to do more of them.

I was really pleased with how all of my assessments of students understanding went throughout this lesson and though the first class didn't do so well on their first quiz (which I had them all correct and explain the correct answers to receive points back), second hours second quiz that I gave them went exceptionally well and no one received below an 80%. And on the test second hour had an average of 83% and third hour had an average of 94%. Which though it's not all about the test scores, it's still a sort of gauge and confirmation of how well the chapter went. And dang, for my first time teaching I'm pretty stinking proud of how well my students seemed to understand the approach I have to teaching and the material I taught them. I can't wait to get back in front of the classroom, but sadly have to give my placement partner a chance to teach now. Which in fact, it's much more difficult to relinquish control now, I don't know how my CT does it every year! I just want to jump back up there and teach my kids!

Once I get my materials from my unit scanned in I'll attach them to this post. Until then, off to the next learning experience!

Are Smartboards 'smart'?

In my content seminar we've been asked to do weekly(ish) readings from The Teaching Gap. In the recent chapter we read about the use of projectors vs. chalkboards in Japanese classrooms vs. American classrooms. The authors talk about how in Japanese classrooms there is no projector simply a chalkboard, which provides record of problems and solution methods. This is the opposite in American classrooms in which there is a projector that's used to focus students attention and demonstrate the procedures. These different methods of "projecting" the lesson really speaks to the approach that each country takes in mathematics education. In the U.S the approach is very much review, demonstration, practice, and corrections. Whereas in Japan the approach is review presentation of a problem, student work through the problems, discussion of solution methods, high lights and summarize. The learning is much more student centered in Japanese approaches which speaks to the minimal use of the chalkboard. If the chalkboard is used it's used to help enforce the importance of student discovery not teacher demonstration.

This use of projectors and boards tends to lead one's thinking to the newest 'board', the Smartboard. How would Japanese teachers use this in their classrooms? Would they even find it helpful? Or would they think were more of a hinder than a help with the 'normal' structure in the classroom? My thoughts are: Smarboards can be very helpful when used to show demonstrations of concepts, especially when they involve figures which one can manipulate on the Smartboard. I think when looking at their use like this, Japanese teachers would see the benefits of the board to help students discovery and understanding.

The use of the Smartboard in classrooms tends to bring teacher's practices to more demonstrations and presentation because with the board the presentations are much more interactive and teachers are able to manipulate the figures used, which is very helpful in geometry lessons. I think that it's really important that teachers don't take using the Smartboard to the extreme and refuse to differentiate from that method of instruction. Yes the use of Smartboards can add to the effectiviness of lessons and lead to deeper understanding of the material but it's important to keep in mind when using them that it's not the ONLY effective method of instruction...

"Murdering" Triangles

One of the biggest benefits of having two classes learning the same material at different paces is that I get to teach the same lesson twice but not one right after the other. This proved to be very helpful when going outside of my comfort zone and teaching a more hands on lesson/activity to help students learn the angle sum of triangles and then find a formula for the angle sum of other polygons. Initially when I did this activity with 2nd hour which is the students who are at level for seventh grade I found there were a few things missing which I thought could be helpful to students for the next time. It also just so happened that the first time through this activity I was observed by COE a second time. My coordinator thought this activity was very fun for the kids and even told me that he was able to learn something from the lesson he didn't know before. He thought the lesson was refreshing to see since it was so different from the lesson I had done the first time he observed me. He did suggest that I provide some sort of closure for the students, which I failed to provide for second hour and he felt that they might not have fully grasped what I wanted them to from the activity and a good way to gauge that would be asking them simply "So, what did we learn today?"

When I did this same activity with 3rd hour I knew that I wanted to provide more closure with the students and also have them help develop a formula we could use to find the angle sum of polygons. I figured since 3rd hour is the more advanced students they would need less guidance than my first class and would be able to come up with this formula with much less help than second hour would have needed (I didn't do this generalization with 2nd hour). Knowing how chatty 3rd hour can be and having the lesson on a Friday AND that Friday being Valentines day AND being the day I was observed by my content coordinator...well needless to say this activity was either going to be great and productive or a total flop.

While in the lesson I felt that though the kids were SUPER chatty, I was able to reign them back in and keep them focused enough to take from the activity what I wanted them to...

Funny side note: when I asked students to rip off the two angles of their triangles whose vertices they hadn't placed on the straight angle, many students responded by gasping and complaining that we were murdering triangles by doing such a thing. Thought that was something only math loving middle schoolers would come up with and had a good laugh with them about it.

The students asked lots of questions that I wasn't really prepared for, and I like to think that I think of nearly every question before going into the lesson but this really shouldn't have surprised me since this class is so witty and can come up with enough questions to fill an hour just full of questions. There were many questions that students asked about which I wish I had had more time to address and especially after meeting with my content coordinator and talking through how to answer the questions. I think I'd really like to take the time (if I have it) to go back and discuss with students WHY we can't/can divide the polygons into triangles a variety of different ways and have students explore different ways of dividing up our polygons and how to make those work (if possible). I'm hoping to spend some review time having students look into this along with go back and look at more variety of triangles to solidify our "proof" of the sum of the angles of every triangle equaling 180. I think next time I would also remove the last two polygons (lightning bolt and star) from the hand out until students had already gained a deep understanding of how to find the sum of the angles, then (especially with an advanced class) I might give them those last two polygons to find the sum of the angles as more problem solving types of questions to push the limits of their understanding.

The activity didn't go poorly by any means; it actually went very well there's just a few things I would like to change. With a little guidance from me the students were able to come up with a general formula for finding the angle sum of polygons at the end of the lesson. Which my students before weren't able to do and didn't have the time to do. At the end of the lesson as I was passing out the worksheet with a reflection and take home piece, I had students cover with me possible answers they could have for their reflection piece on what they learned from the activity. By doing this I was able to get all the students involved and thinking about the lesson along with gauge their comprehension of what we'd just done and know if they were taking away from the lesson what I wanted them to. This wasn't something I did with 2nd hour and was really helpful because I realized how much my students had taken away from the activity and even though they were chatty they really learned a lot from the activity and had a lot of fun.

There are definitely ways that I could shorten or extend this activity based on how in-depth I want my students to explore and how much I think my students can handle. But overall I think for my first time stepping outside my comfort zone and doing an activity with students I was able to create an activity that engaged students, was fun, and had them learning and taking away from the activity exactly what I wanted them to.

Home run or strike out?

I realize that it's been quite some time since I've posted; with taking six classes, TA-ing Monday-Friday, and working four jobs I'm pretty much using more time than I even have available. Plus! This past week I began my unit with 2nd hour on Monday and 3rd hour on Thursday. After hardly sleeping through the night Sunday night, I woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed ready for my lesson with second hour (mind you this is sarcastic and I was actually terrified). I've learned that all my past experience with kids babysitting, nannying, and tutoring has really helped make me feel comfortable being in front of the kids and I find that what I most worry about is how much influence I have over these young minds. It's absolutely terrifying how some students hang on nearly every word I say and how much influence I have over their lives and minds; but this is also an absolutely amazing feeling. I cannot put into words how amazing this week was for me, every day I love teaching more. People always say that it's the "ahhh-haa" moments that are some of the most memorable and rewarding and after hearing my students have these moments this week I have to agree with them. It truly gives me butterflies to hear my students say "ohhhhhh! That makes so much sense now!". And just the fact that in my first week of teaching I was able to give many students moments like this is just mind blowing (I can't help but be a little proud of myself).

That being said, this does NOT mean that the week went flawlessly. Monday and Tuesday went very very well, and this was a big bonus seeing as Tuesday I was observed by the College of Ed. Needless to say, I was more nervous/terrified going in to teach Tuesday than I was Monday. But I also came out of Tuesday with more confirmation that this exactly where I'm suppose to be right now and I'm doing exactly what I'm suppose to be doing. The first thing my COE coordinator said to me in our meeting after my lesson was, "You're going to make a great teacher". Just hearing that from someone who's been in the profession for so long was so great and encouraging. I'm so hard on myself when it comes to my teaching that I can convince myself of things being much more terrible than they actually are. I ended up getting a voice mail from my coordinator later in the day telling me how great my lesson was again, and saying he couldn't get my lesson out of his head. Isn't that what we want from our "students" and ourselves? Our lessons to be so great that our students go home and talk about them to their parents or apply them to aspects outside of our classroom...

What made Tuesday even better was how great the students were and how receptive they (typically) are to the lessons I give. They're so willing to learn and interact with me and are not afraid to ask questions and I really can't ask for a better group of students to try out all my crazy activities on and begin my teaching career.

After Tuesday's lesson came Wednesday lesson; which I went into knowing I had a TON of material to cover and fingers crossed I'd have time to cover it all. Sadly, that lesson didn't go as smoothly as Tuesday's and because I spent majority of the period covering the beginning vocab, this left little time at the end of the lesson for the more complicated portion of the section. I only had a few minutes left in the period and quickly gave a simple example of the end material with little explanation. This proved to be fatal mistake. I knew at the end of that lesson that students were NOT comfortable with the material and did not come away from that lesson with an understanding of what I wanted them to. This is where the idea that teachers need to be 'flexible' came into play. I decided that what was best for my students was to recover the material (mostly the end of the lesson) again the next class period and give them two days to do the homework. It was when I was giving the lesson for a second time that I had nearly every student saying "Ohhhhhhhh! I get it now!" and though it was frustrating for students to be so confused on the homework assignment and lesson initially and it was frustrating for me that I was unable to give a clear, precise, and involving lesson the first time around this really was a good learning experience about being flexible when lesson planning. Being able to cover the material a second time, a day later, was also really helpful for me to get an understanding of where my students got tripped up and come up with a different way to present the material.

Moral of the story: though a lesson might strike out the first time it's presented, this is an important step in the learning process of becoming a teacher and it's important that we're able to be flexible and pay attention to our students needs. You never know, the same material presented in a different way might just be a home run the next time around.

Setting Goals

The past two days teacher assisting have passed in a whirl wind of review games and tests. Since our CT was gone this week it was up to us to lead the class for the two hours that we're there. This proved to be a bit more taxing than I initially thought it would be. We started the class by telling student when we needed their attention instead of yelling or counting down like most teachers do we would raise our hands and say "raise your hand if you can hear me", the students responded really well to this and would quiet down relatively quickly after we did this. This didn't matter when it came to reigning the students in before the review game though, after a lot of flustered "raise your hand if you can hear me"'s we finally got the review game going and were able to get the kids focused on something productive. I learned that middle schoolers REALLY enjoy review games and to be prepared next time for a very rowdy classroom by the end of the game; especially if it comes down to one questions worth of point separating the teams. All this being said, and as taxing as leading the class was, I'm still just as in love with what I'm doing and the fact that I can make a difference in students daily lives.

After two days of discovering which methods worked with the students and which didn't work it was really great to finally sit down and figure out my goals for this semester. I went into the coaching conversation with no idea of where it was really going to go; being asked 'what are your goals this semester' is such a vague and daunting question. Throughout the conversation I slowly made sense of what my goals really were and began talking about what it might mean to see those goals being accomplished. I realized that what I really want to accomplish this semester is to find a method of teaching which allows my students to interact with not only me but each other in a productive manner. I want to find a way to create an environment where I don't have to constantly ask students questions to get an understanding of where they stand in regards to their comprehension of the material. But rather, students are free to converse about the material and the classroom is more of a discussion rather than a lecture at students.

I also want to try and incorporate activities into my lessons in which students get to work collaboratively to come to a deeper understanding of the material. This goal came about after observing my students working together on a worksheet using material they had just been taught and appeared to understand. But, once they were asked to apply this knowledge to a context other than how it was originally taught, they got confused and did not understand how to do this. Observing this really got me thinking about how I would like my students to have a deeper understanding of the lessons they're taught. It through more activities and hands on applications of the material my students might be able to achieve this deeper level of understanding that I would like them to.

With all these goals in mind it's easy to say I want to do all of these things in my classroom but it's still up for debate on how I can accomplish this. I know what I want my classroom to look like and how I would ideally like it to function the only thing now is accomplishing this. And I think it's important through this whole process that I try new things and test a variety of methods in order to see which work best to achieve the type of classroom I want. But! It's also important that I don't overwhelm the students or my CT with too much change. Too much change will lead to the opposite of what I want to accomplish in the classroom. I also need to work on finding new methods of instruction and activities to use with my students in order to for them to achieve a deeper understanding of the material. Any good resources and helpful hints throughout this process would be greatly appreciated!

Next step, lesson planning this weekend and giving my first lesson Monday. Hopefully the first lesson is more of a hit than a flop!

What now?

This past year my understanding, knowledge, and love of mathematics has grown and become something I didn't even know was possible. With that, I am finally beginning to understand why some of my professors are known as the "crazy" ones because of how much they l.o.v.e. the material they're teaching. The tricky question that follows that understanding is, does that mean I'm also on my way to becoming one of the "crazy ones"? And thus follows the question of whether or not that's necessarily a bad thing. The answers to those questions are still up in the air...

With this first week of teacher assisting I'm also beginning to see why I was led to this profession in the first place. I truly believe the best teachers are the ones who not only love their jobs as educators but also their content and the relationship they're able to form with all those they come in contact with. I'm beginning to see why this is what makes the best educators; though I'm not ecstatic about waking up at the crack of dawn every day, this is outweighed by how much I love being in the classroom and working with the students and watching them learn and understand. The sense of pride that comes with seeing what I've shown a student to do when faced with a problem is beyond rewarding.

I can't believe that a week ago I was terrified that I had not made the correct career choice. I am beyond excited to start teaching in my placement, create my own lessons, learn new ways to teach the material, and learn how to incorporate all the new technology that is available in my classroom. Whether or not I'm able to do all of this successfully will most likely be the biggest hurdle but that's the point of teacher assisting is it not? Trying new things, pushing your limits as an educator, and bettering yourself through the mistakes and successes you have. The only way to gauge whether or not what I do is successful will be not only be my opinion but also the reactions of my students...Here's to hoping this semester comes with more successes than failures; one can only hope right?

Getting Acquainted

First I should start this blog by saying that it will be filled with not only my experiences through teacher assisting and student teaching but also my mistakes, fumbles, slip ups, successes, triumphs, and anything else I can think of that has/will either strike out with my students or prove to be a home run. That being said this whole adventure into the world of teaching mathematics starts with this semester of teacher assisting. And that's where this blog will begin.

With this first "week", if you can even call it that, came my first experience teacher assisting. And I have to say I was extremely nervous for my first day and though I've known since the third grade I wanted to be a teacher I was still nervous going into the classroom that this would end up being something that I wasn't meant to do or couldn't do. I can confidently say that this was NOT the case at all and after this first week of teacher assisting I am more confident than ever that teaching is exactly what I was meant to do with my life. I truly love being in the classroom and working with the students and cannot wait to see what the rest of this semester has in store for me.