Monday was a little rough. Mostly because I had no idea what to expect. They keep telling us to remember what is was like for us to be in the grade we are teaching, but honestly, can you remember anything about the summer between 3rd and 4th grade? I was probably chilling by the Old Mill pool, living the dream of a 9 year old. I only taught during the first hour of the day on Monday, and that was only rules and procedures of the class. We gave a math assessment during their normal math block later in the day. My class average? a 26%. Pretty daunting knowing that is what you have to work with for the summer. Some of my students have trouble with basic subtraction, let alone subtraction with regrouping. I know I don't remember much from elementary school, but I know I could do 4 digit subtracting by 3rd grade.
Tuesday I taught my first real math lesson. I tanked. And tanked big time. Trying to manage a class of 17 9-10 year olds, after lunch, at the end of the day, while trying to teach them how to write the inverse of an equation? It was not working. I felt like I was giving out warnings and consequences left and right, but I could only go so far because otherwise half the class would have been in the focus corner. I left school holding back tears and feeling pretty low about my abilities to teach these kids anything. I got together that night with another girl in the SLA corps, teaching the same grade level and same math block as me, who had had a similar first lesson experience. We tore through our lesson plan for the next day and came up with some really good ideas.
My lesson plan for Wednesday, needless to say, went worlds better. I could confidently say about half the class mastered the objective of writing an equality problem using pictures. And the half that didn't were still just making simple and identifiable mistakes on their end of lesson assessment that could easily be fixed. Feeling pretty good about my abilities as a teacher leaving the classroom Wednesday, TFA had other ideas about my confidence level. I felt like Wednesday was by far the most stressful day of the week. In our sessions after school, I felt like we were dumped with an entire load of things they wanted us to do for Thursday: two more lesson plan rough drafts (it takes about 1-2 hours for me to write a lesson plan), to make the calendar for the rest of the summer for all the lesson objectives we're teaching in math, and to separate our class into math skill level groups and reading skill level groups and to come up with mini-lesson plans for our academic intervention hour (AIH - the hour we have in the morning for learning support for our students). This is not to mention that we still had a lesson plan to finalize for Thursday, I was supposed to meet with my CMA (corps member advisor) for 1/2 hour, and have a 2 hour special ed learning session that evening. I was at the point of breaking. I got back to campus and just unwound for about 1/2 hour, talking everything through with my best friend (who by the way, I think is the only thing that keeps me sane here most of the time). After I got off the phone, I had a text from my CMA asking if I would like to reschedule because of how overwhelming that night was going to be. It's like she read my mind. Also, when I got to my SPED session, the person in charge informed us that it was not mandatory and the only thing we would be going over that night was an introduction to SPED and the types of things we would probably encounter as SPED teachers. Basically, everything SLA talked to us about at induction. She told us to leave if we were too overwhelmed with other things, and I high-tailed it out of there. I came back, met up with Ericka, who I had worked with the night before on lesson plans, and we got our lesson plan finalized for the next day. It was still my second latest night that week, but I can only imagine how much later it would have been if I hadn't have had all that extra time free up (and just for reference, when I say late I'm talking around 11:00-11:30 bed time).
Thursday was tough to get through because of the lack of sleep, but AIH went well and I really began to understand the importance that this session is going to have for my students this summer. I'm working with the 'low' group for math and it's really allowing me to see the points that learning is breaking down for these students. Like I said, I have students that have a hard time with basic subtraction, and it was in this session that I figured that out. Without it, I would have never been able to accommodate Shantrecia in math class that day. Because I knew she was still drawing pictures to figure out subtraction, she wasn't going to grasp the concept of 4-digit subtraction with regrouping. I was able to spend extra time during independent work time just taking the problem slowly and repeating the steps over and over again. I know she still hasn't mastered it, but I now know what she needs in order to master it. I also got some great feedback from my FA (faculty adviser) on my lesson. She made me feel so confident in my teaching. She told me it was a pleasure to be in my class watching me teach, and she could really tell the students were engaged in what I was teaching because they could see and respond to my excitement.
Friday seemed to take so long to get here. I know it was only yesterday, but it seems like it was weeks ago. Coming in on Friday, our collab (collaborative teaching team) was named collab of the week! It was pretty exciting. I don't really know why because there are so many times we don't have our shit together at all, but I think it was good for us. It gave us more confidence and allowed us to come together as a team a bit more. Although, I experienced another tanked lesson, but this time it wasn't due to my students' misbehavior, but to my inability to explain rounding to a place value correctly. (Thank goodness for that AIH time!).
I am really enjoying this experience though. Just getting to know my students makes me so excited to have a class of my own this fall. I'm really getting to know the ins and outs of my students. Like I know Melvin loves Math. He's one of my biggest behavior problems, but I know just what to say to encourage him to act right. I rarely discipline him because I just have to positively reinforce his good behavior a few times, and he's respectful, participatory, and kind the rest of class. However much he loves math, he's on a second grade reading level and hardly ever does well on his assessments because he doesn't know what the problem is asking him. So I'm learning just the right way to help him read the question without having him admit he doesn't know what it says. He's constantly look over at me during the math block before mine for recognition that he's doing what he's supposed to. I just need to get him to translate this into not just doing well to please me, but because he understands that learning, in all subjects, is essential to his success.
I'm thinking about maybe trying to feature a new student a few times a week on here, just to give a peek into my classroom and what my students are like. Every day is so interesting with them, and the things they say and do. They surprise me with something new and wonderful every day. Like one student, Cameron. He's in my mid-level reading group for AIH. I administered the reading test for him at the beginning of summer school, and nothing really stuck out to me. But we were talking about making predictions and inferences, especially focusing on using pictures, during AIH on Friday. He turns to me at the end of the hour and says, "Ms. Gauthier, it's cool that this is based on a real story." I asked him, "how do you know that Cameron?" and he replied, "On the front cover of this book, they have a real picture of an event from this story next to the drawing." I was blown away because I didn't even pick up on that, and here's a 4th grader, about a grade level behind in reading, and he just got that on his own.
No comments:
Post a Comment