Last week teaching!

My last week was full of fun lessons (and observations). Unfortunately I was sick on Monday so I had to send my lesson plans to school with another girl so my teacher would have them. Not that she needed them, she is very experienced. I spent the day sleeping and watching movies. How productive.

Wednesday was a bit stressful because I was being observed right away in the morning. I had put together a maths lesson in which the students would be in groups forming representations of double digit numbers. The kids loved the stations and demonstrated understanding by creating some awesome representations with unifix cubes, plastic fruit, and bundle sticks. I was terrified of what my post observation was going o bring because I spent most of my time trying to get some students to stop yelling at each other, stop throwing the manipulatives, stop running around the room, and start working. By the time the lesson was over I was in tears. I was afraid that the teacher observing me would think that I did not have any managemant skills. During the observation the teacher said the stations looked like they were a lot of fun and that she knows how hard it is to observe and assess students progress when there is disruptive behavior in the room. I was relieved. The lesson had went well and I wasn't going to be kicked out of the school. :)

Thursday was my last day with the students and I was very sad to be leaving. My mentor teacher had taught me so much over the past three weeks. I have grown so much as an individual and as a teacher. I cannot wait to get home and share my experiences. The day went by fairly normal. I think my most memorable moment was when I had a heart to heart with a student who displays a lot of behavior issues. It was second lunch and time for all of the students with detention to go to the detention room. Second break was almost over and I walked down to the tuckshop to grab a lemon drink. There I saw the student sitting on a bench. I very casually went up to him and asked him what he was doing and where is was supposed to be. He knew he was supposed to be in detention but he did not want to go. He explained to me that detention is boring and he just wants to play. He also said that he thought all of his detentions were wiped clean after break. I explained to him that they were, but his behavior since being back was why he had detention. I then asked him what was worse one day of detention or two. Because in this school students are given an extra day if they fail to show up. And of course he responded that two days was worse. We continued to talk about respectful behavior and how to stay out of detention. He ended up going to detention. I was so proud of him. For the past week he had been avoiding it. He just needed a different perspective to look at the situation.

At the end of the day I brought 100% real fruit juice strings in for the kiddos along with some new pencils (I think pencils are actually afraid of elementary schools because you can't find them anywhere!). The students loved them and unfortunately had to be excused to go home. I wasn't with this class as long but it still hurt when I saw the last ponytail flick around the corner. Although I may never see any of those kids again I will never forget the many lessons they taught me.