Today is the beginning of my second week. I am looking forward to getting to know the students more, developing better relationships with them, and actually beginning to teach my sampler lessons to the students. We still have a few things to get out of the way such as creating class rules and talking about classroom environments(honors class).
Today was just an ordinary day. Nothing really happened that is worth noting, but I will write about each of the classes.
My first class was the same old, same old. We continued with Tae-Bo. However, the weather was crappy so instead of doing the walk/run, we went to the weight room after the class completed the Tae-Bo video. I have come to realize that my cooperating teacher just yells too much at the students. “You shouldn’t be talking.” “Pull your hair back.” To me, these are very minuscule things that don’t really need to be frowned upon. The students love the social aspect of the class, therefore they will talk. For girls at this age, a lot of what they do is based upon their looks. Some of the girls have such a resistance to the rule of pulling their hair back. My philosophy is that if the student can participate safely regardless of their hair being down or up, then what does it matter? Anywho, this class just does not like to do Tae-Bo and who can blame them. They do the same video every day. It’s boring.
After the Tae-Bo video, we took the kids over to the weight room for the last half of the class. The students have the basic ability to lift weights. However, they need to learn how to spot, do certain exercises, and how to be safe in the class. Near the very end of class, I taught a group of boys how to use a bench and a bar (bench press). After this, I noticed that I was spending too much time with certain students. I find myself gravitating towards the students whose names I know. I am trying to get to know all their names, it is just a long process. It would be easy to be intimidated by the amount of names that I have to get to know. However, when looking at it, I have the majority of students’ names down and it is actually not so hard to do. It just takes a little time and effort on my part.
The beginning of the second class was quite interesting. I have been really getting to know the students and noticed that as soon as the one boy walked out of the locker room, he was not in a good mood. In the beginning of the class, during the run, he was walking with me. Throughout the length of the walk, I was persistent in having him tell me what was going on. He refused the first time saying it wasn’t a big deal, but after I said “Okay, well I am here if you want to talk about it.” Eventually, before it was over he told me that he was upset that the teacher got on his case for not bringing his clothes. “He was yelling at me like I do this all the time and I don’t.” I empathized with the student, but he is one of those students who looks for attention. I still listened though, that will never change regardless of who the student is. I just told him to shake it off and it will be alright. However, as we finished our lap together, the teacher started yelling at him again saying that he didn’t do his lap. I looked at the teacher and said that he did and I finished with him. Apparently it wasn’t to the teacher’s standards, but instead of listening to the teacher continue to yell at him, the student just said “Fine. I’ll just do another one.” As I passed the teacher, a student was holding the door for us. The teacher made a comment about the student (one that I can’t exactly remember, but it was bad enough for me to think, “Are you serious.”) After the teacher said it, he followed it by saying “what a joke.” There was one student who witnessed all this go down and chuckled and said “yea” when the teacher made those comments. I couldn’t believe this teacher would do this in the presence of a fellow classmate of this younger boy.
The third class finished up the co-creating lesson today with creating class rules. The class was really low key as far as activity and discussion go. We created rules and consequences for those rules and the students seemed to agree with them. At the end of class, I had them do the human knot activity and one of the hula hoop activities. Let me tell you! These students have a problem holding onto each other’s hands. I know that comes with the age, but it was just funny to watch them. Some students would hold onto the wrist or shirt of the other person. However, this was really only the problem when it came to a boy and girl holding hands or when a boy had to hold another boy’s hand. I didn’t see this behavior whenever a girl had to hold another girl’s hand. As I left this class, I thought to myself “Do the students notice what we are trying to do?” Sometimes I feel like what I am doing for the students doesn’t matter to them. I think that I am just early in the stages of this process to notice the changes in the students.
At the end of the day, as I was biding the students a farewell at the door, I pulled one student aside, one who was not participating and engaging in off-task behavior during the last class. I had said to him that I wanted him to come to class next time ready to participate and that I expected better from him as a student. He replied, “They were making fun of me right in front of you!” This comment totally floored me. I couldn’t believe that I had missed it. As part of our discussion the other day, the students said that the teacher doesn’t notice it in response to the question “What does the teacher do to stop bullying?” I have always told myself that I will not let those things slide, but here I was with this student telling me that I completely missed it when it was right in front of my face. I felt so small at this point. I told him I would do a better job next time in trying to notice it, but “you have to bring it to my attention if I don’t notice it right away.”
With all of the classes, I have given them the task of creating a class name. With this, I hope to have the students also see that not only am I giving them the sense of ownership in the class, but also a sense of identity. As labeled on paper, it just reads Class 3 – Period 1, for example. Having a class name, I believe, puts the students under the same umbrella. We usually associate names with large groups as being teams. I want the students to see that they are part of a team and the peers that surround them are their teammates. This way, students can associate themselves with a team and have a sense of belonging. Maybe they will even be more responsible for their peers knowing that as a team, we don’t want to let one another down.
I may not be physically exhausted at the end of the day like I was at my elementary placement, but I sure am mentally tired. These students can zap the energy right out of you and make you view everything in a negative way, but then again we have those days in which you leave the school feeling you can conquer the world because you feel empowered by the students. You have those days in which everything finally clicks and you see the reasons as to why you are here.
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