Week 17: Done!

Monday, May 6
Today starts the end of my student teaching career! I can't believe that my last week is here. It's been a fun adventure but I am ready to move on to the next step. Both of my placements were great with awesome students, teachers and colleagues. As I look back on my time at the schools, I can see a lot of growth. I think back to my first day and how nervous I was, and now I feel such confidence in front of the classroom. I remember not knowing how to prepare those agonizingly long lesson plans, and now I can whip them out in no time. I remember not feeling so confident in talking to the other teachers at the school, and now I'm collaborating with other teachers on what we should do in what units. I remember having a hard time remembering my students' names, and now I could tell you their names, family life and how they are doing in school, or what they need to work on. I absolutely feel like I have grown in my teaching ability too; I have a better idea of what lessons need in order to be effective and engaging. Student teaching has been an incredible experience!

Tuesday, May 7
Because I am only teaching journal this week, I have a lot of free time. This enables me to spend time in other classrooms so that I can see even more variety of teaching styles. Today I spent time in the other kindergarten teacher's class. Her class is actually a little behind ours, so what I observed were lessons that I or Christy have already taught. It was really neat to see another teacher do the same lessons and pick up on the differences between us all. Christy is very laid-back while Dawn is a little more strict. Her classroom seems to have more rules in it and the students are much more responsive to her. I think my teaching style is in the middle between the two but probably closer to Christy. I am more of a relaxed person so I would guess that I am more laid-back. I still maintain my classroom management, and so does Christy and Dawn, but overall I am more relaxed. It was good to experience another classroom though and see another teacher in action!

Wednesday, May 8
Tomorrow we are having our Mother's Day Fashion Show so I did a lot of prep work for that. Here's what the day consists of tomorrow: students change into an outfit of their parents, parents arrive at school, students do a fashion show, sing some songs, students eat ice cream with parents, students sing another song, and then students go home with parents! The whole thing only lasts an hour but we have been practicing for a loonnnngggg time for this! The students are doing a great job with their songs and their runway walks are hilarious; they are putting so much hip into each step-- it's great! I spent today cutting the flower nametags for the adults and putting together their presents for their mothers. Our aide Mindy made silhouettes of their side profiles, and we made CDs with mother-y songs on them that the students decorated CD case covers for. Today was mostly spent getting all those things ready for tomorrow; it flew by!

Thursday, May 9
Today was an absolute success! The students did such a fabulous job with everything! The only thing was that the morning class had a little bit of camera-shyness and were quite a bit quieter when singing their songs, but otherwise they did amazing. The students were hilarious walking down the "runway" in their parents outfits; obviously the clothing was large but they did the best they could for walking. When we were helping the kids getting dressed for the fashion show, they were sort of having a hard time getting everything on. One boy who's quite small, Jace, was putting on his dad's pants, and Nick says, "Wow Jace, those are some big pants." Jace looks up quite exasperated and says, "Yeah, I wish my dad was skinnier!!" =)
It was a great day though; everything went according to plan and the kids did a superb job!

Friday, May 10
Last day =(  it is definitely a bittersweet feeling. I am SO sad to leave Beecher; it's been an awesome placement where I have learned a lot and have made some awesome friends. Christy and Mindy took me out for lunch to celebrate. I feel so blessed to have met them this semester; it has been awesome getting to know them and I will absolutely be staying in touch with them, both professionally and as friends. Because this week was Teacher's Appreciation Week, I've given a little something to Christy each day to show her how thankful I am to have been in her class. Overall when I look back over the semester, I have seen God's hand throughout each day at my placements. I feel so blessed for such a great semester!!

Week 16: Sad that next week is #17!

Tuesday, April 30

My classes welcomed me back to school today with the sweetest gift—a book made by the students entitled “Marital Advice”. Each student made a page giving advice as to what my husband and I need to do to keep a happy marriage. Their responses were hilarious! Some suggested jewels and rings, opening up car doors, painting the house and my favorite, buying me a monster pointer finger. (The children have little plastic pointers that go on their fingers that they can use whenever we do letterbook; the idea is to help them follow along better and stick with the class). It was the sweetest gift; I was so touched by Christy’s thoughtfulness!

I am only in charge of journal and science this week, so I don’t feel like I’m doing too much. We are changing units now in science, and are starting the butterfly unit. It’s really neat because the kindergarten teachers order butterfly kits where actual caterpillar eggs come in the mail and the students are able to watch them become caterpillars, make their cocoons, and then become butterflies. For science today, we did a worksheet that explained the phases of a butterfly’s life. The students needed to cut out the squares and put them in order so that a book was made. It’s a great activity because many students still need to practice their cutting skills.

Wednesday, May 1

I am still in shock that May is here. I cannot believe how quickly this semester has flown by! Each month Christy does an assessment journal with the class and puts them into a binder to better assess their progress throughout the year. The journal pages have a question on the top of the page and lines on the bottom for the students to write their response, and then color a picture above their answer. Each assessment is done at the end of the month, so today I did April’s which asked, “What do you like to do on a rainy day?”

Going over this page with the class made it even more obvious to me how each student is different from one another. Some of their responses were complete sentences with great descriptions and perfect spelling while others were struggling with words like “to”. It is crazy how much of a gap there is in the students’ ability levels. What’s great about assessments like these journals though is that the teacher is able to see the student’s progress based on his or her work since the beginning of the year, rather than just comparing the student to where everybody else currently is.

Thursday, May 2

Whenever a student has a birthday, the parents are always welcomed to bring a birthday treat for the class; Christy sent a note home in the beginning of the year letting the parents know. It usually is a cupcake or brownies, but sometimes the over-the-top parents make it much more of a bigger ordeal. Tomorrow is Caroline’s birthday and her mom went completely overboard with the treats. She brought ice-cream cups, brownies, strawberries, lemonade and made goodie bags to go home with each child.

Christy is thankful that we’re towards the end of the birthdays because if there were many more, she would probably send a note home letting parents know that just a simple treat is fine. After exquisite birthday treats like these in the past, students have gone home telling their parents that they had to bring xyz and had to make goody bags for all the students. It’s fun to celebrate birthdays, but when snack time takes a half-hour because of all the birthday treats, it’s a little extreme. The children obviously love it though; one student said today, “Now this is a birthday party!”

Friday, May 3

Today was a half-day of school. Though most grade teachers look forward to these days and get excited for them, they are days that Christy has come to dread. Because of having half-day kindergarten, that means there are two classes, so on the half-days, the afternoon does not have school whereas the morning class still comes in. When looking at the academic calendar for Beecher, I found that there are seven half-days so the morning class essentially has an extra week of school than the afternoon class! This makes it extremely hard to keep the two classes on track.

Yesterday we squeezed in extra projects in the afternoon, and they did a fabulous job getting everything done. In the morning, we went at a much slower pace and spent extra time on things like coloring, cutting, snack time (thank goodness for all those extra birthday snacks!), etc. so that today, the morning class could do the rest of the things that the afternoon class did. The morning class got everything in and the classes are on the same spot now in each subject, but because we still had extra time, the students got to watch a short video on phonics. It makes it hard having the keep the classes together, but it’s worth the extra effort.

On another note, I cannot believe that next week is my last week at Beecher. My time here has flown by! I will greatly miss my class and my teachers; they have all become so special to me. Both of my student teaching placements have been such a blessing in my life!