My darling practicum student has come and taught twice this week and has done such a good job. It was a HUGE learning experience for me. For the first period of her instruction, I watched her stand at the front of her classroom and do her thing (beautifully, of course), but this thing inside of me kept calling out, "Get away from the front of the classroom. They're not paying attention to you! Look out at them! I see 10+ students that are definitely not looking at the handout you sent to them..."
Then, I remembered. The intern I taught some lessons for said almost those exact same words to me after my first lesson in his class.
It felt good to realize that this little baby teacher has done some monumental growing in the last year.
Also, something happened yesterday. A good something. Here's the email I sent out to those people I wanted to tell...
After talking to some other teachers at the school and many prayers, I went to see Jarod, the principal at my school, just with the plan of asking about some substitute request forms I had submitted for the upcoming months.
He answered my questions then stated, "Hey, I might have an answer for you about us by next week. Some things have come to my attention, and I may know sooner than I indicated before. I need you, and I'm willing to tell BYU 'No' to another intern to keep you. You'd have to go through the application process of course, but I just wanted to let you know."
Of course my heart was racing, but I seemed to manage a somewhat professional reply by saying, "Jarod, I would submit 100 different applications if it meant I got to be a part of this school. Thanks for keeping me updated."
I just wanted to let each of you know. And I wanted to thank you for the support you have been to me as I've gone through these past few months. It has been a wonderful experience for me to learn and to grow and to grow in my own confidence as a teacher as well.
Extra prayers and crossed fingers!
Believe me, I'll keep you posted either way. :D
Then, today, Jarod came in with the Superintendent of the district to observe my remediation time. My students were all hard at work on their iPads. It was the perfect moment for an observation, and my sigh of relief was probably audible after they left my room. Yay.
I have been so incredibly blessed, and I'm so glad that so much of what I do seems to be second nature:
- Cold call on a student who you anticipate is off task. Yup. Did that today without thinking and saw 5 other students sit up a bit taller in their chairs afterwards to prevent the same fate.
- Walk around the classroom as I'm teaching to ensure I have everyones attention and so that I can monitor student progress WHILE I'm teaching. Not easy, but I've gotten WAY better.
- Set expectations regularly. I'm still, to this day, raising my hand and saying, "Raise your hand..." before I actually ask a question. Do I still have students who don't meet that expectation? Yes. But at least now I know it's not because they didn't know what was expected.
- Do the WE-WE-WE-WE-WE part over and over again before expecting your students to do it successfully on their own.
I'm telling you - I'm learning SO much.
But the DWA test is in less than two weeks and I have SOOOO much more practice to do. So - I'm off!
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