Observations May 17

I did a little bit of everything this week. On Tuesday, I monitored the class so my cooperating teacher could work one-on-one with students in the hall. The students were to use this free time to catch up on their reading. However, one student in particular was completely off task. She would mess around with other students, talk loudly, and at one point even threw carrots. I told her to pick up the carrots and she tried to blame someone else. I said that I didn't care. She proceeded to pick them up while still talking loudly. She wasn't responding to anything I said and I was thinking of what to do next. I threatened to take her to my cooperating teacher and that did the job. It was a brilliant short term solution but won't work when I'm a teacher. I think there's only so much you can say before you just have to remove a student from the classroom. I also did more grading this week. My cooperating teacher is in the process of clearing out her classroom because she has to switch rooms next year. We're still working on organizing everything including the students' work. I had to enter their homework into the grade book and that took nearly two hours. I had to separate the work into four piles. That doesn't sound too bad but 60 students times four papers equals a big mess. I noticed that only five students turned in all of their work. The kids are losing interest as the year winds down. I find myself daydreaming of summer as I write this. Hopefully my lesson next week will be both fun and educational. On Friday, my cooperating teacher asked me to go over the students homework with the class. I was a little hesitant because I was only half-paying attention when she went over it with the previous class. It went rather smoothly. I still get the occasional cause of nerves, but that soon passes once I get into it. I think I've made good progress in a short time. I'm feeling optimistic.