All by myself! Today, my cooperating teacher isn’t going to be here and there isn’t a substitute for her. I guess it won’t be any different than any other day. Whenever I teach, she is barely there to watch what I do and if she is, she usually bops in and out to make sure things are going okay. I can understand where she is coming from because it can get a little boring if you aren’t the ones teaching, but I definitely don’t have that interaction with her as I did with my elementary cooperating teacher. It goes back to a comment made earlier. Elementary school is all about community whereas middle school/high school is all about individuality.
Maybe she is just giving me space to figure it out on my own. Maybe she just doesn’t understand the process we are doing so she stays away a little bit. She might have other things that she needs to catch up on so she uses the time that I teach to do that. Who knows? However, the thing I dislike about it is that she hasn’t yet given me any type of feedback or suggestions to make me a better teacher or to understand this age group a little more. My other teacher had me thinking more deeply about my teaching style and lessons through questions that he would ask. I don’t get that here.
Today’s classes are going to be cut short because of fundraiser stuff. We are responsible for getting the students’ fundraisers and handing them out. We had to make sure that everything they ordered was there and they weren’t missing anything. This considerably cut the amount of time we had to teach. We normally get 75 minutes with the students. Today we were lucky to get 45-50 minutes because of handing out the stuff in the beginning. All the students were more talkative and chatty today. I am assuming that this is because they are coming off their spring break, but it will be hard to settle them down so that we can give instructions.
The first class was pretty basic. I introduced them to the personal fitness unit I was planning for the next four weeks. However, to get them to have some ownership in the class, I asked them what other activity they wanted to do for the next four weeks. I explained to them that it couldn’t be something they already did or dodgeball! They decided they wanted to play football. While taking that into consideration, I changed it up a little and said we would do Gaelic football. I don’t know if that negated the whole question to begin with, but I assumed it would be okay because Gaelic football has similar component to American football. The students seemed to be accepting of this after I told them it had components of American football, volleyball, soccer, and rugby.
We finished off the class by doing the Cupid Shuffle as a line dance and as a partner dance. It took the students such a long time to warm up to the activity that we were doing. Of course, not being able to see the bigger picture, I was thinking to myself that this was going to be a complete failure. However, it just took time for them to get moving and get going with the dance. After I taught the basic parts and we did a few rounds of single line dance, I asked them to get with a partner because now we were going to do the same dance again but with a partner. I didn’t have any stipulations on it being boy/girl partners. What I saw was girl with girl and boy with boy. Needless to say, when I told them that they would have to hold the hand of their partner, one boy exclaimed, “I’m not gay.” This made me get on my soapbox. I told the students that “just because you are holding somebody’s hand doesn’t mean you are gay, lesbian, or you want to date them, kiss them, or that you like them. It shows me that you are willing to cooperate with the activities I have planned for you and that you be mature enough to do them (this was an 8th grade class).” I gave them the option to just stand beside each other and do the dance. They stayed with their partners for the remainder of the class period. It ended up being good at the end.
The second class was similar. I introduced them to personal fitness and proceeded to ask them what they wanted to do as their second unit. I don’t want back to back classes being the same and that is why I am incorporating two units into 1. We will be alternating between personal fitness and an activity that they choose. This class, just like the last one, wanted to do American football. Again, I changed it to Gaelic football so that I could introduce them to a different cultural and non-traditional game. They too seemed to be accepting of this.
We continued the last part of the class with the Cupid shuffle. However, with this class we only got to the line dancing part. There wasn’t enough time at the end of class to introduce them to the partner dance. However, I did explain the first part to them and they weren’t as bad as the first class (this class is 6th grade). This class also took quite a bit of time to warm up to the activity.
With the third class, I am doing self and peer feedback teaching styles. With this, I plan on having the students do stations. The first time through will be with themselves doing self feedback. The second time through will be with a partner and partner feedback. Each station has a description of what they are to do and what they should be looking for. While walking around, during the partner feedback, I heard a lot of partners giving feedback that wasn’t listed on the sheet. I had to redirect their focus so as to not make it hard for them to do.
As I reflect on how that class, I don’t think I did a really good job explaining what self and partner feedback was. During the activities, I heard a lot of off-task comments, pertaining to the task, but not to what they were supposed to be looking for. I also don’t think the students really did self feedback. I didn’t have a task sheet for the students to check yes or no and I think it would make a world of difference. I also think that having different activities would have really helped in engaging the students so it wouldn’t be so boring for them to do the same stations the whole class period even though they only went through them twice.
In particular, there was a group of girls who just didn’t want to do anything. They kept complaining about the heat and the weather instead of trying the activities. I reminded them about one of our rules “try everything at least once” and I pulled two of the girls aside at the end. I told the girls, “I read your responses about how you have fun in PE when you are with your friends and I want you to be with your friends, but if you can’t participate in the activities because you are too busy talking to your friend, I might have to split you up. I don’t want it to come to that because I think you are mature enough to make the right decisions, but I just wanted to let you know what I am seeing.” I hope the girls respond well to this. I really don’t want to have to split them up and then not like coming to PE.
Today’s advisory was rough one. Since my cooperating teacher was not here, the other guy that is in the portable was not handling the students well. All he kept saying was get something out to work on and sit down and be quiet. He sat at his desk and was on the computer. I took in into my hands to teach the class. It is a math class, but instead of doing math, I taught them the basics of sign language. This really helped the kids focus their attention, to be quiet, and I saw the interest in many of the students to learn this new language. There chatter and questions were directed towards what they were learning instead of just idleness. It turned out to be a really good class and I could see that the students were really engaged in learning this new language.
At the end of the day, I feel as if I wasn’t really prepared for this day. I kind of did it by the seat of my pants. I knew what activities I wanted to do and where I was starting, but as for the details, I was a little unsure so it makes me feel a little unorganized and prepared. I don’t have all my lesson plans written out or the unit plans done. However, didn’t we say that in order to be student-centered there has to be room for movement? That’s what I like to describe it as. As hard as it may be for me because I like details and structure, I have to provide that room for the students to make decisions and incorporate those into my classroom. Without my block plans and everything laid out, I try to do so much in so little time. I need to reset and reorganize myself.
It’s like I mentioned in the beginning; I am all by myself. Yes, I know that I have the support group of my peers while going through this process and I have my colleague here to talk about certain aspects of teaching, but when it comes down to it, I am by myself. I am the one doing the lesson plans, the one who teaches, the one who disciplines, the one who is going through this process. Everyone will go through it differently; therefore that is what makes me feel all by myself.
Hope I can get back into the swing of things again. It’s going to be hard and it’s going to be even harder to keep up with this kind of reflective journal. I guess I just “don’t have anything thoughtful left to say.”
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