I said goodbye to Mrs. Wimpey and Mrs. Cortez today. I will be given a new internship placement in the next couple of weeks, and while I'm very excited, it's a little upsetting that all of this came about. I will take responsibility in this matter and say that I am at fault for not setting a standard for myself to abide by, but it's a two-way street and sometimes things just don't go as well as you'd like. Therefore, I'll be getting a fresh start elsewhere.
As a result, the frequency with which I blog in the next couple weeks will probably decrease. No assignments means no ah-ha moments in the classroom which equates to nothing to post. Although, given the way the semester has gone, maybe I'll say something about my classes... the good and the bad. We'll see.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
Testing... 1, 2, 3
Class Observed: Honors Pre-Calculus
Teacher: Mrs. Terri Cortez
Time: 8:00 - 9:30
I graded quizzes! That's really about it. Mrs. Cortez gave a lesson on the area of triangles, and she did something clever with her smartboard. She had answers blotted out on the board with gray, and then made the background gray so that it looked like it was just a gray background with some notes on it. Then she'd ask the class guided questions (so they would give the answers in the order that they were blotted out), and when they answered correctly she would use her eraser tool and erase a random area on the smartboard and hey, look, the answer! It was pretty neat, and about the extent of excitement during my morning.
I guess if I'm going to have to get something out of this, it would be that sometimes conventional methods are not the best way of presenting questions and answers to a class.
Teacher: Mrs. Terri Cortez
Time: 8:00 - 9:30
I graded quizzes! That's really about it. Mrs. Cortez gave a lesson on the area of triangles, and she did something clever with her smartboard. She had answers blotted out on the board with gray, and then made the background gray so that it looked like it was just a gray background with some notes on it. Then she'd ask the class guided questions (so they would give the answers in the order that they were blotted out), and when they answered correctly she would use her eraser tool and erase a random area on the smartboard and hey, look, the answer! It was pretty neat, and about the extent of excitement during my morning.
I guess if I'm going to have to get something out of this, it would be that sometimes conventional methods are not the best way of presenting questions and answers to a class.
Monday, October 8, 2007
Orange Peels
Date: Monday, Oct 8, 2007
Class Observed: AP Calculus
Teacher Observed: Mrs. Mandy Wimpey
Pretty uneventful day. I don't know how I can make all of these posts meaningful. Nothing special happened in AP Calc other than Mrs. Wimpey asking me to talk to her class this Wednesday about college mathematics. Mrs. Cortez had her planning period today, so I dropped in and discussed when I would be teaching my lesson. No, I haven't done it yet, but I've been discussing it with my teachers. I've got a pretty firm date set (this Friday) to teach area of triangles to her Honors Pre-Calculus class. Sort of looking forward to it, but I'm sure I'll be nervous. Why? It'll be graded... I'll have a ruddy camera on me documenting every single um, uh, and so. S'alright -- good to know I won't have cameras in my classes when I actually start teaching. Thank goodness for that.
Class Observed: AP Calculus
Teacher Observed: Mrs. Mandy Wimpey
Pretty uneventful day. I don't know how I can make all of these posts meaningful. Nothing special happened in AP Calc other than Mrs. Wimpey asking me to talk to her class this Wednesday about college mathematics. Mrs. Cortez had her planning period today, so I dropped in and discussed when I would be teaching my lesson. No, I haven't done it yet, but I've been discussing it with my teachers. I've got a pretty firm date set (this Friday) to teach area of triangles to her Honors Pre-Calculus class. Sort of looking forward to it, but I'm sure I'll be nervous. Why? It'll be graded... I'll have a ruddy camera on me documenting every single um, uh, and so. S'alright -- good to know I won't have cameras in my classes when I actually start teaching. Thank goodness for that.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Go Sawks
First of all, the Red Sox are going to the ALCS... woo!
Secondly, my Friday observation.
Teachers Observed:
Mrs. Mandy Wimpey (8:00 - 9:30) - MT IV: Statistics
Mrs. Terri Cortez (Substitute, 9:35 - 11:05) - CP Pre-Calculus
Mrs. Wimpey had to lecture her students. They, along with myself, were given those clickers with A, B, C, and D on them. She was using an interactive assessment tool that allowed the students to answer questions with anonymity. First of all, I think this is an EXCELLENT tool; if a student gets an answer wrong, the class doesn't know about it, and if the majority of the class gets a question wrong, the teacher knows what he or she needs to focus on. Problem is, the kids start to not care after a few questions, and begin to joke around instead of taking the assessment seriously. So what did Mrs. Wimpey do? She took care of business. For about 5-10 minutes she lectured her students, but not in that mean teacher sort of way. She stopped the assessment, took up the controllers, kept her voice down, and instead of saying things like, "What's wrong with ya'll? Stop joking around!", she said things that related to the students. She talked about what they would do outside of High School after they graduated, how Stats was probably the most important math subject to know in their lives, how they needed the class to graduate, etc. She kept it very calm, very cool, and she had a certain sweetness to her voice that, as I noticed, made students nod and understand that they were in the wrong. That's exactly how I want to handle situations in my classroom, and I hope when those times arise, I'll be able to do so.
Then I went to Mrs. Cortez's class. Mrs. Cortez was out at a math conference, and so there was a substitute. She, Mrs. Cortez, had assigned work from the book as well as a worksheet. I collected my assessment data and sat down to do some analysis on it. After a little while, I decided I'd go ahead and walk around to make sure everyone was doing alright (because the substitute was certainly too busy reading her Vogue magazine). A lot of the students said they were having problems with number 60, so I did something... I taught! I got up, and without any sort of nerves or jitters, I taught. I went through the problem, asking questions along the way to make sure that the students were answering the problem and I wasn't simply giving them the solution. While I was up there, I thought of things that I would've never thought of if I had been a student, and I was really excited to see that inner-teacher come out. It was an incredible feeling.
This made me realize it's not public speaking that I have a fear of. It's not standing up infront of crowds. It's grades. That's right, grades. If I know I'm being graded on something I'm giving, it bothers me. It gets to me knowing that there's a rubric sitting infront of a professor and she's checking off things -- "Oh he did this, but he didn't do that." It's nerve wracking. I understand that I'll have administrators sit in on my classes from time-to-time, and I'm sure I'll be a little nervous then, but it felt like when it was just me and the students I was really doing what I was meant to do.
Just a shame that I can't carry that over into my college courses.
Secondly, my Friday observation.
Teachers Observed:
Mrs. Mandy Wimpey (8:00 - 9:30) - MT IV: Statistics
Mrs. Terri Cortez (Substitute, 9:35 - 11:05) - CP Pre-Calculus
Mrs. Wimpey had to lecture her students. They, along with myself, were given those clickers with A, B, C, and D on them. She was using an interactive assessment tool that allowed the students to answer questions with anonymity. First of all, I think this is an EXCELLENT tool; if a student gets an answer wrong, the class doesn't know about it, and if the majority of the class gets a question wrong, the teacher knows what he or she needs to focus on. Problem is, the kids start to not care after a few questions, and begin to joke around instead of taking the assessment seriously. So what did Mrs. Wimpey do? She took care of business. For about 5-10 minutes she lectured her students, but not in that mean teacher sort of way. She stopped the assessment, took up the controllers, kept her voice down, and instead of saying things like, "What's wrong with ya'll? Stop joking around!", she said things that related to the students. She talked about what they would do outside of High School after they graduated, how Stats was probably the most important math subject to know in their lives, how they needed the class to graduate, etc. She kept it very calm, very cool, and she had a certain sweetness to her voice that, as I noticed, made students nod and understand that they were in the wrong. That's exactly how I want to handle situations in my classroom, and I hope when those times arise, I'll be able to do so.
Then I went to Mrs. Cortez's class. Mrs. Cortez was out at a math conference, and so there was a substitute. She, Mrs. Cortez, had assigned work from the book as well as a worksheet. I collected my assessment data and sat down to do some analysis on it. After a little while, I decided I'd go ahead and walk around to make sure everyone was doing alright (because the substitute was certainly too busy reading her Vogue magazine). A lot of the students said they were having problems with number 60, so I did something... I taught! I got up, and without any sort of nerves or jitters, I taught. I went through the problem, asking questions along the way to make sure that the students were answering the problem and I wasn't simply giving them the solution. While I was up there, I thought of things that I would've never thought of if I had been a student, and I was really excited to see that inner-teacher come out. It was an incredible feeling.
This made me realize it's not public speaking that I have a fear of. It's not standing up infront of crowds. It's grades. That's right, grades. If I know I'm being graded on something I'm giving, it bothers me. It gets to me knowing that there's a rubric sitting infront of a professor and she's checking off things -- "Oh he did this, but he didn't do that." It's nerve wracking. I understand that I'll have administrators sit in on my classes from time-to-time, and I'm sure I'll be a little nervous then, but it felt like when it was just me and the students I was really doing what I was meant to do.
Just a shame that I can't carry that over into my college courses.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Boomshakalaka
Courses
Math Tech IV, 8-9:30, Mrs. Mandy Wimpey
CP Pre-Cal, 9:35-11:05, Mrs. Terri Cortez
We started off with a review for their test on Friday which was then pushed back to Monday. Typically I think it's a good idea to push a test back, but only a day. If you do it more than one day, well, the kids may think that they're going to be able to get away with it a lot, and they'll start acting as if they don't know so that they can keep pushing the date back. Other than that, it was a relatively simple class: a review, a review of the review, and then a few extra minutes at the end of class.
The next class, Mrs. Cortez, had the students do problems out of the book at the end of class. Unfortunately, one of the problems from the book gave inadequate information, and while we tried wracking our brains for about 20 minutes to figure out the problem without using future information that hadn't been covered, but we couldn't. In this case, I liked what Mrs. Cortez did. Instead of introducing a new concept and overwhelming the students, she said that she'd save the problem for later when she had gone over what was needed to actually do the problem.
Other than that... really, nothing insightful. Just a typical day at school.
Math Tech IV, 8-9:30, Mrs. Mandy Wimpey
CP Pre-Cal, 9:35-11:05, Mrs. Terri Cortez
We started off with a review for their test on Friday which was then pushed back to Monday. Typically I think it's a good idea to push a test back, but only a day. If you do it more than one day, well, the kids may think that they're going to be able to get away with it a lot, and they'll start acting as if they don't know so that they can keep pushing the date back. Other than that, it was a relatively simple class: a review, a review of the review, and then a few extra minutes at the end of class.
The next class, Mrs. Cortez, had the students do problems out of the book at the end of class. Unfortunately, one of the problems from the book gave inadequate information, and while we tried wracking our brains for about 20 minutes to figure out the problem without using future information that hadn't been covered, but we couldn't. In this case, I liked what Mrs. Cortez did. Instead of introducing a new concept and overwhelming the students, she said that she'd save the problem for later when she had gone over what was needed to actually do the problem.
Other than that... really, nothing insightful. Just a typical day at school.
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