Midpoint, Yay!

Long time, no blog!  If you don't already know, I've wrapped up my experience in my 2nd grade class and moved onto my special education placement.  I've posted a video for your viewing pleasure to check out how I feel about my new placement!

 

First Impressions

I survived!  

Today was the first day and I decided to make a video about it. 

A couple of disclaimers:
1)  I may have made my lead teacher seem unappreciative or rude, but I really REALLY like her and she is a very nice woman who has already helped me a lot!
2) I mention the name "Jeffery" as an imaginary student- it is a fabricated name, there are no actual Jefferys in our class (not even middle names!).  It would be a serious FERPA violation to post something that discloses student info!
3) When talking about my 2nd placement, I wasn't using People First Language.  What I should have said was, "a classroom with students that have emotional behavioral disorders" instead of "emotionally disturbed" classroom.  Apologies!

One of my dogs was enthusiastically barking in the background AND there is a lot of traffic on the street behind me!  Overall, I feel that it was a great first day- it is not as overwhelming as you would think!  After the students left, we had a short staff meeting, and afterwards my lead teacher and I skyped with my supervisor (a part of the orientation process).

Before the First Day:

Over the summer, both my lead teacher and I were out of town.  We had previously discussed having me visit and help prepare the classroom once we came back, so imagine my surprise when my teacher told me I had to come in on a Monday morning at 7:30 a.m. for training!  The certified staff came in on Monday and Tuesday from 7:30 a.m. to 2:15 p.m. to plan lesson/unit outlines for the rest of the year.  It was cool to see what the students would be doing, but ultimately I sat idly because I had nothing to add/no say in planning.

On Tuesday (and especially Wednesday), we did actual classroom prep.  In order to butter up my lead teacher, I actually came in for two hours on Sunday (yeah…) to help out a little bit and ended up organizing a cabinet full of construction paper and another cabinet full of dining utensils/plates/cups, etc.  Most of my tasks in prepping the classroom included sharpening #2 pencils, sharpening colored pencils, creating labels, constructing book boxes (like the cardboard ones that are about ninety-nine cents at IKEA), writing names on nametags, and other odd jobs.  I feel like my teacher is nervous to ask me to do anything, simply because she knows how she wants things done and you know what they always say- if you want something done right, do it yourself.

I can’t blame her.  In fact, today while writing student names on their take-home folders/student handbooks, I was writing in all-caps.  [Fun-fact:  the handwriting that teachers use has a name (ex: times new roman, papyrus, arial, etc.) and my lead teacher told me that they (the teachers) try to use that style of writing to model and make the students’ future transition to cursive easier.]  Basically, I failed at writing- I was pretty embarrassed.  I actually wrote all of the name tags, too.  When I offered to complete that task, I could sense her reluctance as she handed them over to me in order to complete other important prep-stuff.  My teacher is really nice to me, but I’m really starting to wonder if she’s slowly dying inside because I haven’t adjusted to how she operates yet….