Practicum Experience

Over the course of my practicum experience so far I feel like i am not learning anything really beneficial from my host teacher. Let me try that again. I am not learning anything that I would really use in my future classroom. Instead I am learning how NOT to act as a teacher in the classroom.

For example, if my students have a question or are confused about something, I will not just simply brush them off and move onto the next topic or question on a ditto. There is one student in the classroom that gets visibly frustrated whenever he gets stuck on a question for an extra few seconds or an additional minute. The teacher seems to ignore his frustration and moves onto the next question. This causes the students to verbally voice his annoyance, thrown down his pencil, and dismiss the ditto or sweep it to the floor. For the rest of the lesson he will usually just sit there while the other students do their own dittos. I have been trying to work with the student whenever I notice him struggling and try to encourage him and help him to complete the ditto so that he does not fall behind the rest of the class. I let him know the parts that he got correct and try to guide him using his strengths, which tends to work most of the time. Also, I try to surprise him with my support and relate a problem or question to his life or interests.

But it's hard when I don't seem to have the support or guidance of my host teacher on my side.

Recently, I helped the student completed a diamond poem that students were working on in class. He came to me with spelling struggles and even let me help him fix some things that the teacher wanted corrected or changed. I really felt very happy inside when he came to me with a question or a correction.

Substitute + Harvest Party = Chaos!

So i finally got to experience my first time with a substitute teacher this past week in my practicum classroom. It was not too bad but really it was kinda strange. The sub did not really do much and she basically was just there to be there.
The students seemed to not really like her that much and ran wild. She could not really control them at all, and some of the time i had to step in to do something. But there was also a harvest party that day in class, so i got to experience my first classroom party with the students.

For the most part the students behaved themselves. They had a lot of fun and really enjoyed playing the different party games that the parents brought in to the classroom. Afterwards they each received candy and a Halloween goodie bag with more treats. So needless to say, students were very very hyper at the end of the day. :)