Week 2

This was quite an interesting week. My co-op teaches 5 classes a day, all of 8th grade English. His 2 afternoon classes are accelerated. His first 2 classes of the day are regular, and his third class is the one with all the learning support/IEP kids. For some reason, I think that is my favorite class.

On Tuesday, since class A was a day behind the other 4 classes because of a test last week, my co-op instructed class A and gave the other 4 classes an in-class work day to get caught up on assignments, papers, and projects. At the end of class he did a vocab exercise with them, but he had me be in charge of classes B, C, and E for 20 minutes at the end to oversee their work, answer questions, and lead that activity. It went really well, and I took over class B full-time on Wednesday. (I pick up C and E on MONDAY!)

The students are reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer right now, and they are getting into the discussions. Some of them aren't reading, which is pretty obvious, but my class B kids seem to be really into the discussions. In fact, my second day with them (Thursday), something AMAZING happened--- EVERY STUDENT in the class participated in the discussion. Normally it's the same 5 or 6 students, and there are 2 students who NEVER raise their hands. Thursday and Friday, though, they both had their hands up more than anyone else. I was pleased, and my co-op says that the one student (Student "A") raised his hand more for me in one class than he has for my CO in the whole school year. Another student always looks really upset, but he was smiling this week in class. I appreciate things like that, and as he was leaving class on Friday I said "Have a good weekend, Damien." He smiled and headed out. I think that knowing the students' names is really valuable to me. They are impressed and it shows them that this "newbie" cares enough to learn who they are.

The craziest thing that happened all week is that a girl cried for me. My co-op and I graded papers that only his accelerated classes wrote, and many students ended up with 30 or fewer points on the 45 point assignment. I told them I would answer any questions they might have (which meant explaining to kids that they needed to include more detail), and one girl came up to me to ask what she did wrong. I explained that we needed more detail, and even gave her specific examples of what she could have written. I also said she could have spoken to us if she was confused about the assignment before she turned it in. Then I looked up and she is shaking and has tears in her eyes. I felt so bad, but there wasn't really anything I could do. She said she has never failed anything in her life (even though she really got a 67% on the assignment) and was just upset. I told her that in my poetry unit there would be opportunity for extra credit, so she nodded and left to go to a different teacher's room. (This was during study hall). I couldn't believe it. My co-op said he saw what was happening and was close to giving her an A to get her to stop crying. I was a little disappointed by that, but then he said he wasn't going to change anyone's score because they could have chosen to write about a different work.

It was a pretty crazy week, and I also had a classroom management issue too, when we were playing a review game about the reading that was due for class that day, and a few of the boys were calling out asking "Do we get the point?" etc. My co-op said I should have demanded authority, and that I only "suggested" authority. That is helpful feedback for me as I try to determine my classroom management style and continue to try to develop a good rapport with the students.