Into the Fire.

Hi all,

This week has been intense, to say the least. I have spent the past two days in my placement for the first day of Kindergarten! Yesterday 1/2 of the students were there and today the other 1/2 came. I am flat out WIPED. When Dr. Parker said, "There's no tired like 'teacher tired,'" he was not kidding. These past two days were only half days with half of the kids, so when Friday comes and I see all the students all day, I'm sure it'll be something. Though I've struggled with energy, I've persevered as much as I can to be in the classroom, be alert, and complete some coursework (and have gone to bed at 10 every night).

 I am proud of how I've handled interacting with the students. My C.E. has allowed me to handle them in situations like guiding the morning dances, working on routine procedures, and interacting with the parents in the morning. I was incredibly nervous at first, but have adjusted somewhat. As she told me, "You lose all shame in Kindergarten." Currently, I'm finding that to be true.The developing of my PLN is what I've been focusing on, especially talking to the other Kindergarten teachers at Ida Rankin and exploring Science teachers on Twitter.

As far as satisfaction goes, I've been able to watch all Science videos assigned for this week! Sadly, I'm usually struggling to accomplish this. Last year in Social Studies, I fell behind so often. This semester does not allow time for me to do so, therefore I must stay on top of things. Not only do I wish to succeed in this area of time management for the sake of "passing" or for the sake of my own mental health, but also to be a good teacher leader. When I am conscientious of my actions pertaining to leading and working hard for my students, I follow NCPTS 1.a, "Teachers lead in their classrooms." Teachers need to be excellent time managers and have all their ducks in a row, especially in Science education, because often experiments are involved where various materials are needed. We not only need to focus on teaching the standards, but teaching them in an effective way (like using the 5E model) and causes them to dive deeper reaching the "so what?" of their education. This takes time and effort from teachers.

In the coming week, I plan to nail down my PDP goals, acquire necessary materials for Student Teaching (like the school handbook, class schedule, rough timeline of teaching topics laid out by the teacher, etc.) and establish my standards and central focus of my unit for SCED, so that I can stay on top of assignments and not get overwhelmed later in the semester.

In SCED on Tuesday, we talked about Phenomena which I learned to be natural Scientific occurrences. I originally thought this must relate to supernatural events, but phenomena happens every day, all around us. In this article, there are 10 natural phenomena that might be strange or rare for us to look at, but is real and fascinating! Link to Article. I plan to use phenomena in my science lessons, but the trick is relating it to young students like the Kindergarteners I'll have in January. Here is a lesson plan for preK-Kindergarten where the students learn about Mr. Octopus, use their fine motor skills, learn about the ink squirting process of Octopi-a natural common phenomenon.

So far, I've contributed to class by participating in our in-class collaboration assignment about Phenomena, and set up a time to meet with my group for 435 referring to our Social Studies teaching assignment. Tomorrow night, I'll also be meeting with my Science Fair project group to discuss further action. In this case, I feel I can help my colleagues more by contributing to the project. At first, I was in another group so switching to this group has caused me not to contribute so far. I'm anxious to get started on this project and witness the results.

Finally, here are my screenshots of the tweets I shared thus far:

I have loved Rita Pierson ever since I watched her TED talk on opportunities for all children in EDUC350. I believe students can pick up on hints of when teachers "give up on them" or don't expect much from them. Whenever students receive these vibes, the begin to underperform. If teachers have high expectations for all their students (differentiated, of course) maybe they'll find more success. 

Today, we went over our 3 main rules for Kindergarten: Be Kind, Be Safe, and Always Try Your Best! The students described being kind as always being a friend to one another. This is a basic definition, but one we should all live by. Remember the Golden Rule!

The final tweet was one I'm most excited about and goes along with my outside research for the week. This tweet leads to a video about allowing students to learn about phenomena and how it relates to science. One woman says, "...Phenomenon doesn't have to be phenomenal, but it does have to be something that's engaging and really hooks students' interests..."

Thank you for reading this very long post and I hope you enjoyed!

Gabrielle :)