Monday, March 8th- Friday, March 12th

Another condensed week-long summary:

We continued reading Memory Boy this week. The kids have adjusted, finally, to the Lit Circle discussion formats. The students have adjusted to our new routine: each day they talk for 5-10 minutes with their Lit Circles about the previous day's reading, they get a new worksheet from me, they complete the worksheet while reading the day's assignment, and then they prepare for discussions the next day. I've also prepared study guides for the students to complete which they are allowed to use on our upcoming test. These study guides and reading worksheets have once again reminded me of the achievement gap which exist among my students. I find myself struggling between assigning additional work in order to remedy the non stop chatter of students who get through their reading assignments and worksheets quickly- these are my high achieving students and I want to present each of them with a challenge. But on the other hand I have plenty of students who are doing their best to just barely keep their head above water. Ms. Luby suggests offering more assignments to fix this problem, but what do I do about the students who can't keep up? 

Another new lesson which I was introduced to this week was in regard to Knowledge Bowl. I volunteered and judged at this Thursday's Knowledge Bowl, which Bemidji hosted. I haven't found myself extremely interested in the activity throughout the last few months, it's fun but not necessarily an activity I'm passionate about, but watching a meet in action helped to light a spark for me. I enjoyed watching the kids compete, challenge themselves, and often unveil unknown strengths as they advanced from round to round. It was definitely a worthwhile evening. 

Monday, March 1st- Friday, March 5th

I'm behind on posts, so I'm going to condense some news here:

We began a new novel this week. The book is called Memory Boy and was written by a local author named Will Weaver- one of my former English professors! In the novel a family races to escape natural disaster by traveling from Minneapolis to Itasca State Park. I aimed to draw the students in to the local relevance of this novel, so I created a bulletin board which I titled " 'Roadtripping' Across Minnesota with Memory Boy." I put a map of MN up on the board and on Wednesday, after the students had read some of the novel, we mapped out with tacks and yarn the start of the characters' journey. The kids seemed to get a kick out of this activity, and were competing to volunteer information about the cities which they recognized. I enjoyed their genuine interest in the board and activities. On numerous occasions I even caught the students sneaking over to the map to point out to classmates where their home was located on the board- it goes to show that these guys really do pay attention to the decor of a classroom. 

I also included on the board an "Author Spotlight" section where I posted pictures of Will Weaver & information about his writing and life. We talked about the author before starting the novel on Monday, and I utilized the bulletin board as my visual. The kids seemed to listen contently and I appreciated their interest here. I'd say that the board and the introduction to Memory Boy were a success! 

Other highlights from the week:

- Students started the "Lit Circles" which I have planned to use for the rest of the book. We began with a rocky start as a lot of the kids seemed to be put off by this change from their normal read & take a quiz procedure, but by the end of the week they'd adjusted to the change and had begun to take advantage of the discussions. 

- More lessons in classroom management were acquired this week as I struggled to get students to adjust to many changes: a new unit, a new style of covering reading concepts, and a new "group" seating arrangement. The start of the week was rough, but after frequently explaining my expectations and behavioral consequences to students we shaped up by the end of the week. 

Monday, March 1st

"Long" weekend came and went already. Today I began the kids on a new project- a novel called Memory Boy. I hope that the students enjoy the book, and I think that many of them will. The book is a recent one, it was written by a local author, it takes place in Minnesota- some of it even mentions Bemidji, and there's a lot of action throughout the plot.

The nature of having the students read during class time proved beneficial to me today. I was able to accomplish quite a few little tasks. I adore productive days!

Tomorrow Mr. Coe comes to visit.... Observation #3- the time is going by so quickly!

Thursday, Feb 25th

The students weren't in today, as all day the school hosted parent-teacher conferences. Our first session was pretty quiet; only 3 sets of parents in 3 hours. After lunch things picked up. We ended up seeing, if I remember right, 40-some parents. Not a bad turn out. I found it a little comical how some parents seemed so shocked by their student's grades. No one seemed mad at me or Ms. Luby necessarily, but at the same time there were many parents who certainly didn't leave their conference smiling. I guess that I came from a home with relatively strict parents who kept fairly close tabs on my school happenings. It surprises, and saddens, me to see how little some of these parents pay attention to their kids' academics. I recognize that lives become busy and with work, family, and other activities it can be a challenge to keep tabs on a student. But I wish for my students that more parents would.

Wednesday, February 24th

Today was somewhat of a work day for the class. I had the students take a practice test for the MCA test which they will be taking in April, we completed the last portion of February's Positive Peer Relations unit, and then the last portion of the hour was utilized to wrap up any last MLA Works Cited pages.

Tonight also marked my first experience with parent-teacher conferences. I unfortunately found myself slightly disappointed by the parent turn out at conferences tonight, though I surprised myself with how much I ended up enjoying speaking with the parents about their students. I especially liked it when the parents brought the student along with them. I felt as though I left tonight knowing some of my students much better. I adored that feeling.

Tuesday, February 23rd

After two days out of the classroom, today was a bit of a jumbled game of catch up for me. Parent teacher conferences take place at the end of this week, and with little time to spare I devoted every free moment of today to ensuring that I had all of the persuasive papers corrected... not an easy feat.

The kids seemed to do pretty well with the persuasive papers overall. Some didn't hand in a paper at all, some didn't put forth the effort to make sure that their preparatory steps were taking care of, and unfortunately they lost points for this. I put a lot of emphasis on time management with this assignment as I required the students to have certain pieces of the assignment completed by certain dates. This worked well for some students, challenged some, and defeated others.

Monday, February 22nd

Today was a day of misery for me. I didn't head into school. Instead, I spent my day locked in my bathroom wishing to God that my stomach would stop torturing me. Food poisoning bites. Hard.

Thursday, Feb 18th & Friday, Feb 19th

Thursday 2/18/10:

We worked on wrapping up work on papers today. The students are slowly but surely coming along with developing their papers and Works Cited pages. I'm happy with the effort which most of the students are putting forth, and more than ever I'm realizing the differences in ability which exist among these students. I recognize that the nature of a traditional classroom requires a teacher to construct lessons which cater to the "average" student, or an ability level which rests somewhere in the middle of students' achievement. But as I spend more time in the classroom, I wish so badly that I could divide my classes into smaller groups of students with more similar ability levels. The students who easily grasp concepts find themselves often bored during class. At the same time, I have numerous students who struggle to keep up, and many who can't. What's the solution?

Friday 2/19/10:

Interesting is the only word I can think of to describe this day. Prior to our arrival, the Middle School Principals decided that the student teachers would spend Friday Feb 19th out of the classroom for an entire day. Instead, it was decided that we would spend our day tallying preference votes for the Middle School's Career Day event in May.

I appreciated the opportunity to help out with a fantastic event like Career Day, it seems to be an annual event which truly benefits the Middle School students. For the chance to help out with such a wonderful event was great. However, I felt a bit cheated to be pulled out of the classroom for an entire day. I don't feel as though as a secondary ed major at BSU that I've been allowed much time in the classroom, especially not time spent actually teaching. Being that I've so badly wanted to have this experience, and that I'm paying a tremendous amount of money to take part in this experience, I would have liked the chance to decide whether or not I would shorten my student teaching experience by an entire. But none the less, I gave the folks who worked to organize Career Day my best efforts. I did my best to make the best of the day. Hopefully the students will be able to enjoy another beneficial Career Day because of it.