Day Four- Speech Coach In Training

No teaching quote to prelude things today, I'm beat.

Today was a long day. I wasn't able to get much sleep last night thanks to ridiculously loud neighbors and an incompetent landlord, so I was a little low energy during the day. I suppose it was good experience, seeing as once I'll have a family I'll need to find a way to bring energy to the classroom despite my current level of sleep.

Luby allowed me again to maintain the class today and work on grading papers. Students spent today working on a novel test, and the test will probably take up most of tomorrow as well. So outside of giving some shot instructions at the start of class, I didn't get to interact much with the kids.

I met my University Advisor today, Professor Rick Coe. He turned out to be fantastically kind and, better yet, he shares my thoughts about the excessive paper that student teaching entails. It was nice to encounter a faculty member who understands what I'm going through... it made me miss Mark. But I guess you have to jump through the hoops in order to reach your goals, right? It'll be worth it in the end.

Two more important things about today-
I encountered my first two significant classroom management instances today. The first involving two female students "jokingly" slapping one another, and the other a young man sexually harrassing a female classmate. The first incident I probably should have handled differently. I chose to speak with the girls, and in the end they both apologized to one another. The second resulted in a behavioral citation. I learned, after speaking with Luby, that I probably should have written up students in both cases, but I now know how to best handle such situations. Another lesson learned.

After school today I helped out with the speech team. I'm low on energy right now, and so while I could write loads about how fantastically nostalgic this experience was, I'll merely say that I look forward to continuing this activity.

Over and out rubber ducky.