I walked out my door this morning to the sun greeting and beating upon my face. This is a new surprise since my last placement was much earlier in the morning. I took a deep breath of fresh air and welcomed this new day, this new challenge knowing that I would be given the strength to make it through any obstacle. As soon as the sun rose this morning, I couldn’t help but imagine my spirits, enthusiasm, and optimism rising with it. Today is the first day of my middle school placement. Whereas all those are rising within me now, I can’t help but feel a sense of queasiness in the pit of my stomach. As all those questions arose the first day of my elementary school placement, I found myself asking those same old questions as well as greeted a handful of new questions. Will I be any good at this? Will the students like me? Can I be an effective teacher? Will what is being asked of me, will I be able to get through to the students the importance of listening to them to make P.E. better? Will they take to this new and different way of teaching, something different than what they know? Can I teach this grade level?
I couldn’t wait any longer in my car and watch as the minutes and the children pass by, I had to walk into the school. In all of my eagerness to get to the school, I arrived a little too early for my cooperating teachers and my colleague that will be alongside me during this transition and placement. The first class is supposed to start at 8:35 and the teachers didn’t stroll in until 8:15-8:20. This caught me by surprise because I was expecting them to be there at least a little earlier than that. I went to the office and sat down for 20 minutes waiting for my colleague and my cooperating teachers to get at the school. It was a little embarrassing because the one secretary kept telling me every 5 minutes that the teacher was going to be late and with the frequent glances in my direction. I was content to sit there, but as the minutes passed by, I grew more nervous.
As these students are passing by, I am trying to look at them and see if I can see any resemblance from the students I came from and if there is any relationship with them. The first couple of students I encountered, I asked, and to my dismay, no relations to students over at my other school. I don’t know if I am seeking that out as part of a comfort thing; that it will provide me with a sense of relief or ease while I start this transition process.
I noticed today that I will be carrying a book bag around for the rest of my life. I won’t be able to escape this. I think this feeling also comes from being a comfort thing. To me, a back pack is the only thing I have really known for the past 16 years of my life. I carry a back pack everywhere I go. It’s one of those things that I rely on, almost like in the Dora cartoon. The back pack had anything that Dora needed for her expedition. I feel as if whatever I need will be found in my back pack whether it be a piece of paper, an opportunity to express my thoughts, or just one of those things that brings me a sense of identity. Without my back pack, I don’t know who I would be. It is part of my identity; it’s a symbol of my character and personality: the studious, ever achieving, over ambitious student. The back pack is one thing that I cannot escape in this life and it’s because it is the essence of my being. School is all I know.
These teachers are so different in their teaching styles. There is one teacher who is the disciplinarian. She yells at the students and takes care of most of the behavior shown by the students. The other teacher is more laid back and only steps into the disciplinarian mode when needed. The third teacher is rarely ever there, but she is kind of between the two. She can yell at the kids to get them back on task or she can just be laid back and let things go. The one thing that surprised me about this teacher though was that she openly stated that she takes her iPod outside and listens to it while she teaches. I couldn’t believe that she said this out loud to me and even the fact that she does it at all.
It feels so weird to only have three classes a day and a two hour break every day. I almost feel like a lost puppy. I have been looking around like, now what do I do? There is just so much time and I am used to back to back class schedules. This part of the transition will be hard for me to adjust to. I like the fact though that I can work out during that two hour break. However, at the same time, I feel like I am doing nothing during the day. I know we haven’t done anything right now because we are just observing, but it feels like we do nothing right now.
There is no room for screw ups or being lazy during this placement. Things are so scheduled and we only have today for observations. Tomorrow we immediately dive into getting student’s perception. It’s going to be weird to see how I adjust to these students. I have to listen to more attitude and language from the students at this level than I had to with the elementary students. I am still trying to find myself in how I can discipline students at this level because it will be so different than students at the elementary level. I talked with my cooperating teacher about what she has done and she explained to me that the students know they have to go run a lap if they get in trouble. Also, with this level, students can now be written up and have to serve detention. I still don’t know the limitations or what constitutes writing a student up. I guess I will find that out as we go along.
Students begin each class with sitting around for the first 10 minutes and waiting for the teachers to take role and the rest of the students to get out of the locker rooms. The next 5 minutes is filled with students doing regimented exercises such as stretching, sit ups, and pushups. They then follow that with a 3-5 minute run around the football field. When they come back in, they get some water and then line up for their next P.E. activity. It will be interesting to see what the students have to say about this part of their P.E. classes when I have the chance to sit down and talk with them about their feelings and experiences in physical education.
My first class was nothing special. The students just got to switch classes. They are doing Tae-Bo. The only thing I did was help students with body placements and technique. I can’t wrap my head around why a teacher would have a unit in which they can’t teach it. The students go into the class, get in their rows, and they watch the videos and just follow along. I must be too much of a control freak that I need to be the one leading the class and not some video, or at least doing the video with them. I won’t lie though; there was a fleeting thought in which I said to myself “This isn’t so bad. I could see having the students learn and perform to a video.” Granted, doing this allows the teacher to walk around and give specific feedback to students as compared to leading the actual class, but I think that it can be balanced given the right amount of class management.
With the second class, it was the honors class. It is only 8th grade students and they are gender segregated. My class is all girls and my colleagues’ class is all boys during this period. These girls were finishing up their pickleball unit. The teacher allowed students to pick their own teams. As the students began playing, not only was it windy outside, but the courts were too big and the wiffle balls were too small for the games. This led to a lot of the ball being played out of bounds or short of the net. After watching the girls, I was thinking to myself “You have 3 week units and this is your last day of this one. It looks like this is day 1.” A lot of the girls would just be standing and talking and not really playing. There was a group of three girls where they were huddled in one part of the court and didn’t really participate with the team across the net. The teacher too just stood over on the fence the whole time. Her feedback and instruction to the girls on the furthest court was her yelling to them what to do. I don’t know if this was just because I was standing there and talking to her or if this is how she usually teaches.
The last class was a combination of both teachers’ classes. There were 40 students (give or take a few). Everyone played basketball and by everyone, I mean everyone! There were 5 people on a team and two teams per court, but because we were inside, that meant 10 people per half court. There was a lot of standing around (mainly by the girls and a few boys) and the boys dominated the games. The teachers stayed in the corner where the desk in and only lifted their voices to yell at the students or lift the whistle to the mouth to tell students to switch. It was nice to see that the students knew which way to rotate without any confusion. I know at the elementary school, you have to tell them every time or they tend to forget. It will be nice to work with this age group now.
To cap off the end of my day, I felt so bad for this girl because I caught her with a razor blade. She was scraping the paint off the table while in advisory (study hall) and I saw a shiny thing in her hand. Needless to say, it was a razor blade and not only was it her, but it was also her friend next to her. The teacher in the room had asked the one girl about it and it was amazing at how quickly she gave up her friend so that she wouldn’t implicate herself. The other girl then brought the razor blades up to the teacher and he was telling her about how having those was a suspendable offense. I could just feel her eyes searing right through me. I thought, “Geez Jenn. Way to get off to a start with these students. Already getting them in trouble.”
To quote my colleague, “This is a fisher price era. Everything is plastic.” How true does his words ring about today’s children. I would really like to know what the world would be like if it wasn’t connected. I remember, no matter how long ago, a time in which we didn’t have computers, cell phones, and iPods. Society is trying to teach these children how to be more of an individual. I think they are teaching them to be selfish. Yes, we want kids and the youth of America to think for themselves and to have their own opinions on certain things. We don’t want someone to think for them or become dependent on someone else, but it doesn’t mean we teach them not to work for the greater good of those around them. It has become more of a “me” society than a “we” society. Then we wonder why students in our schools can’t get along with their classmates and why there is more fighting amongst our youth. Everyone is out for themselves and rarely do you find that one student who is more mature than what he/she is surrounded by to see the bigger picture life. This is the fisher price era. It is more about what you have that you can prove (quantity) than the deeper meaning behind the little things you do have (quality).
Overall, the day was good. It’s nice to see that the students are still eager to come to physical education and participate in the activities. It goes against everything that I heard about students at the higher level. I can’t wait to see how my student perception’s lesson goes tomorrow. It will be something new for the students and something still fairly new for me. Wish me luck!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment