What I have learned after 2 weeks OR Week 3 begins!

I have been meaning to get on here and post about what I have learned thus far in my Student Teaching experience, but I have been so busy! It only took 8 hours for me to learn that waking up at 5:30 knocks you out!(Well actually the wake up time began at 6 and gradually moved back 5 minutes each morning till I wasn't so rushed to leave)  Almost everyday until last Friday I came home and took a nap.

A Quick update before I begin: I took over my first class last Wednesday... it is Psychology with Juniors and Seniors. To satisfy my requirements I need to be solo teaching 5 classes for 10 weeks. I take over my next one (Freshman American History) next Wednesday.

Beside learning that working a full day is exhausting, I have learned other things. For instance, today, I learned that smart kids (the ones that take Psychology because they want to) get activities completed a lot faster than kids that may not be as ambitious. And that those said kids get extremely talkative when they have nothing else to do.

I learned that Pre-Testing may not be such a bad idea (in fact, I'm doing it tomorrow). After preparing a whole activity around Independent and Dependent Variables, since those are usually difficult concepts to understand, I find out that most of them also like Science and are talking upper level courses and already are comfortable with Independent and Dependent Variables. (Something that I still get confused)

On that note, I learned that I should not tell said confusion to a bunch of Juniors and Seniors.

I have also learned that technology is not everyone's best friend and that if your school is still using textbooks from the 1990's and chooses to get the teachers brand new Macbooks and 20 iPads for 20 teachers there is going to be some resentment from your teacher every time he looks at the iPad you insisted on him keeping.

Finally, I have learned that I want an iPad of my own. :)

While that last one was a little friviouls, there are still some things I want to learn. I'm going to list them below and hopefully check them off as the semester goes.
   1. How to deal with a student(s) that does not seem to want to be in my class
   2. How to think of examples off the top of my head
   3. How to include more of the students into discussions instead of me just talking the entire time
   4. How to teach students to take notes and not just copy Word-for-Word from the PowerPoint
   5. How to teach to the OGT without teaching to the OGT
   6. How to effectively use the iPad while teaching
   7. How to get students (specifically Freshman) to turn in homework without asking them about it EVERY day. (I'm not sure I can learn that in a semester)

Maybe this should have come first

I have decided to keep this blog going while I am student teaching as a type of journal to process what I have learned each day.

To keep with the whole privacy thing, I'm not going to post where I am teaching or who the teacher is. I will probably just refer to him as Mr. X or "my teacher." And of course I would never name any student names.

Well, I just wanted to let that be known, so there it is.

Student Teaching begins in T-minus 3 days!

After almost 3 years of preparing to be a teacher one of my last steps begins in less than a week and not to exaggerate, but I am freaking out... just a bit though.

At the beginning of the summer my plans were to take my last two classes and finish them by mid July and spend the rest of my "summer" preparing for Student Teaching (S.T.). But then I found out I had to write one final History paper (which I think I got an A on!!) with a two week extension which took me to the last week of July. Then it was a week of vacations and now its today with 3 whole days left till I start S.T. Of all the things that I have done over my life there has been some knowledge on my part of what is expected of me and this time I have NO IDEA where to begin!

I have had all the textbooks and I know my schedules, but am I supposed to be making lesson plans or UNIT plans? What does my teacher expect of me to be bringing to the table the first week of class?

What I am not nervous about is the actual teaching part or meeting the students or waking up on time (well at least not yet, ask me again Monday night)... those parts I am super excited about! I can't wait for the bell to ring and the students to come in and class to start!!

So, my plan for today and probably tomorrow is to actually open the textbooks that have been sitting in my living room since May and look them over... get some ideas brewing and not worry about it any more. My mom, who is also a teacher, keeps telling me that I don't have to do anything, that my teacher will tell me what I need to do, so I'm going to go with that for right now.

Industrial Revolution and Twitter

Widget Link

Clinicals and Web 2.0 lesson

I am working on a lesson plan for one of my classes. The lesson plan has to include a web 2.0 tool and I think I have a brilliant plan, but i'm not sure if it is going to work... so I am using this post to test it out. It has to do with a Twitter Search Widget... I guess I will soon find out.

Tech and Topics is the WORST!

Just kidding!!!

As a final blog specifically for my Tech and Topics class, Mr. Becksfort has asked that we blog about what we think could be added to improve the class.

Being that my mind is pretty fried and I can barely remember to brush my teeth in the morning with all the school stuff swimming in my head, I can not think of anything to add to this course which would improve it.

I really enjoyed all the great new things I learned about, especially incorporating technology in the classroom and the various new websites that are available out there. Maybe one things that may prove helpful for future students is a list or write up of the websites or various other materials we learn about during class. I personally wrote down almost all the websites we talked about, but they are scattered throughout my pages and pages of notes. Maybe make it available online or at the end of the semester OR make it available online and it have the ability to be added to as time goes on. Then we could always have the newest stuff known to us.

Ok, that is all I have for now. Mr. Becksfort, thanks for making this class awesome and by far the best one this semester and maybe even all of graduate school :)

Teacher Infographics

I personally love Infographics and I came across this one the other day. It is about teachers and their salaries in comparison to the world. I thought I would share it with the internet world.


Via: Teacher Salary Info