Say a Prayer

Hello, to anyone actually crazy enough to read this! (it's okay, I feel a little crazy too. I mean I'm talking to a computer screen lol)

This is my first post, and this will just be a reflection over my student teaching experience, along with my game plan for the first day of professional teaching.

To start off, God definitely paired me with the perfect mentor teacher (shout out to coach Nick Brown of Aubrey HS). Not only was I struggling with transitioning from teaching four-year-olds to teaching high schoolers, but I was also dealing with a lot of personal stuff. Without giving TMI, I was struggling with PTSD, my husband was diagnosed, my car crapped out and my husband totaled his car (within 2 days), and my family was severely struggling. I broke down crying in front of Nick and he was completely supportive. I was able to find myself as an educator without some of the horror stories some of my classmates have told me, and for that I can never thank him enough.

I have learned many things about myself from my students that I have already created ideas to combat my weaknesses. This is an important quality for anyone to possess, but especially professional educators. My first area that I need to improve in would be a system to collect and identify missing work. My next task would be to find a way to set a consistent discipline system, which I haven't quite figured out how I am going to achieve this. Lastly, I need to figure out how to move a lot of my paper assignments to my online google classroom format.

My first teaching position will start the day after graduation! I'm excited and nervous, which according to my colleagues is warranted. I will be my students' 3rd teacher this year and it's only the beginning of December! To start off, I have prepared a slide show to give them a little informatio n about myself, and the new classroom procedures they should expect to follow. (psst... I can't wait to share some of these with you guys! I have some pretty amazing ideas!)

The first day, I will make sure each of my students knows how to copy and paste slides from one document to another using google slides. This will be for their online Interactive Journals each grade will keep. There will be a new journal every unit, they will have a reflection to write over their Unit Journal (what they've learned and what they've struggled to understand) which will count as part of their test grade, and their final grade will combining each of the unit journals into one portfolio, which will also contain a reflection.

Next, each student will create a Quizlet account and will add all the vocabulary words and definitions I feel they will need to know for the STAAR test. They will add onto this account each unit when they receive new vocabulary terms.

Finally, I will play a game so we can all get to know each other a little better. I will create a separate blog post to go into how well this game went and a more specific rules. Basically, think of musical chairs. Say I have 30 students, so I put 29 chairs in a circle. I will start, say my name, and say one thing that I've done or enjoy doing; ex. "I enjoy skiing". If any of my students have gone skiing they would stand and we will run around until the music stops then be forced to find a chair. The person that remains stand will have to share something they enjoy.

I look forward to sharing this journey with all of you, and can't wait to get my classroom set up and meet my new students!