Week 9: Things are goin' fine!

Monday, March 4

Today was Casimir Pulaski Day so no school!

 

Tuesday, March 5

Because of the large snowstorm that didn’t come until 11 in the morning, school got cancelled. I thought it was interesting with how they call off school—the district has an emergency alert system where all the staff gets emails and text messages. They then get a phone call, and need to pass it on based on the phone tree so each staff member gets a text, an email and a phone call. As Christy said, after all that communication, there’s no point trying to fall back asleep! Christy kindly texted me letting me know, but I did check the school’s website and saw it on there as well.

Wednesday, March 6

Because last week Friday was Family Ocean Day, the kindergartners did not celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday yet so that was scheduled for yesterday but due to the snow day, we celebrated today! We wore pajamas and made white and red striped hats in honor of the Cat in the Hat that the kids got to wear the rest of the day. We read some of Dr. Seuss’ stories, but other than that, we did not spend much time focused on him because the week was cut short, and the time that we do have with the kids is so valuable that we need to focus on other things. Doing simple activities like this though is a great way to make days exciting for the kids without taking up an entire day’s time.

Thursday, March 7

I began taking on responsibility this week by opening up each class with the calendar time. Calendar time here is very different than how I did it at CPCS. At CPCS, we had the same routine each day where we had a devotional, changed the calendar, talked about the weather and read the message I wrote telling what specials we had today. At Beecher, Christy has literally about 20-30 things that she uses randomly, so each calendar time is different. I like this because it keeps the kids interested because it’s not the same-ole, same-ole every day, but I did like the consistent structure of the morning meetings at CPCS. Christy is great, but admits that she “flies by the seat of her pants” most days, especially when it comes to morning meetings. This is fun, but will definitely challenge me to be more creative with what activities I choose to do!

For this week, Christy asked me to do focus on addition during our morning meetings. Because the days go by so quickly, sometimes she squeezes in math during the morning meeting. Even if it’s just a few minutes, it’s more than they would have gotten otherwise. So today after discussing the calendar, I did some math facts using manipulatives on the whiteboard and had the kids figure out them out on the board. We only spent a few minutes on this but the kids had no problem with it. It was pretty fun to do a little bit of teaching again!

Friday, March 8

Both yesterday and today, Christy was gone because of a huge kindergarten conference in Schaumburg that she attends each year. It’s a huge event that she always looks forward to and comes back excited about trying new things. She says the hard thing is coming back, excited to integrate all these new activities, but then there’s nowhere else to go with it. Christy thinks it’d be great to have the conference, then go back in a month or two to discuss with others how things are going and what they’re finding to work, or not work.

Because Christy’s been gone, we had a substitute teacher named Michelle. Michelle actually was a student teacher at Beecher last year and now subs 2-4 times a week between Beecher and a school in Manhattan. It was great talking to her and learning more about how it works when you sub and what the job market is like out there. Having Michelle in the class the last two days though definitely helped me see how much kids rely on their normal teacher. Each teacher has their own teaching style and personality, so naturally everyone’s a little different. Christy allows the students to whisper pretty much whenever she is not talking or giving directions; obviously when she’s teaching they need to listen, but if they’re doing a project involving scissors or glue, they are allowed to talk to one another as long as they still work. If their talking interferes with their working, then their privilege to talk gets taken away. Michelle however does not tolerate talking at all; both days she got upset multiple times telling the kids they needed to be quiet. This morning, a student’s mom told Mindy (the afternoon aid) that the girl didn’t want to come to school today because she was so scared of the substitute teacher.

The whole experience just showed me how different teachers are from one another, and also how much students come to rely on their teacher. When something is different, they generally will not like it right away. I can see how it would be difficult to be a substitute, jumping in and out of different classrooms where few things are truly under your control.