My semester started off with my
first ever in-service. We began with an article called “Teaching Isn’t Rocket
Science. It’s Harder” by Ryan Fuller. The article was insightful and well
written. I recommend it to all pre-service teachers or anyone thinking of
becoming a teacher because it highlights the difficulties some can face while
teaching and points out some things teachers run into. Many of these things no
one realizes. At the time I didn’t realize it but this article set the stage
for the way I started this semester. My expectations were that I was fully
prepared and, to be honest, had thought through every possible outcome of
teaching. I was wrong.
Being at the high school everyday
and teaching three to four classes every week has been eye opening. When I used
to only attend one class a week, I never realized how involved everything is. I
am super appreciative for this semester with the practice and advice I’ve been
given. I’ve also started to recall past teachers that I’ve had both in high
school and in college and realized how hard I was on them at the time and how
good they were at their jobs.
I have also found myself digging
out old teaching textbooks from past semesters to try and find new and
interesting activities and methods to use in the classroom. I’ve particularly
appreciated Pam Cole’s “Young Adult Literature in the 21st Century”.
She offers great activities to help engage and apply students and even has the
chapters arranged by genre to help you maximize the most out of her book. I
also received a great book at in-service called “The Core Six-Essential
Strategies for Achieving Excellence with the Common Core”. It provided some
amazing activities you can use to help support and enforce Common Core State
Standards. They’re activities to help students actively engage in reading and
vocabulary exercises that go beyond simple rote memorization, among other
things.
I planned my KPTP unit last
semester and started teaching it on the 6th of January. I’ve found
this to be an invaluable experience because I created this unit from scratch
and it has gone through many changes. I’ve have been making changes to it
recently even, as working with the classes (and being observed) has shown that
I need to engage the students more in active participation with their
classmates rather than just having them work by themselves. It has been frustrating
to not see students turn in work on time and have them miss so many classes. I
have one student who did not show up for the first two weeks of class and has
since decided to attend (which is awesome) but doesn’t want to do any work and
just wants to socialize with other students. It’s hard in motivating him to
turn anything in or participate in any activity.
I’m currently editing an unit over The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time
Indian by Sherman Alexie as I will begin teaching this mid-February to the
freshman. I’ve been co-teaching them on Romeo and Juliet since the beginning of
the semester and I look forward to having them read this book. It’ll be a nice
change from Shakespeare! I hope all of your semesters are going well and that
you are feeling as blessed as I am for this experience!
