This week I taught 3 lessons and enjoyed it! The school day goes by so much faster when you are teaching rather than observing and helping. Teaching is always a great learning experience as well. I can sit and observe teachers all day, but it is always a different field when you are doing it yourself.

A highlight from this past week I would have to say is teaching 5^th period! When I first came to Shaw last quarter, my coordinating teacher was embarrassed to have me sit through his 5^th period class. He would say that they were by far the worst behaving students out of all his other classes. (which proved to be true.) He would not let me teach 5^th period my first quarter there because he was afraid of the effect it would have on my passion for teaching. In one of my meetings with my coordinating teacher I agreed to teach 2^nd, 3^rd and the dreadful 5^th period. My coordinating teacher was shocked that I had volunteered to do such a thing, but he gave me permission to do it. I was not sure if I was nervous to teach this class because my coordinating teacher had talked it up so much or I just had a lack of confidence. Well, whatever the problem was, 5^th period ended up being the best class of the day! It could all be due to the fact that it was my third time teaching the same lesson, or I got a few pointers from my teacher who taught the period before me. After teaching 5^th period, I got a boost of confidence. This is proof to me, that I can overcome tough obstacles in teaching. This was one of the first.

After teaching my lessons, I thought differently about my coordinating teacher in the fact that it is hard to punish students! When I sit back and observe the class, students who are talking are immediately punished for it. After seeing this done many times, when it came time for me to teach, I found myself giving students a billion warnings. I called out names of students, but feared to do it a second time because I did not want them to get a lunch detention. I moved a student from his group and feared that I would be hated for it. I learned that being a teacher can be rough in this respect and I need to not worry about how the students will think of me. In the end, I will be respected for it.

A practice I will adopt in my future teaching is to display class responses to assignments on the overhead/doc cam. I found that when I give the class a set of questions and we answer them verbally, students will still be confused or have less of an incentive to write responses. When we work as a class and I record the responses of students on the worksheet, every student is involved and has a better understanding of the concepts.

An ongoing problem I face is a lack of respect. It is hard for me to respond to students who talk to me at a lower level. I was trying to help a student the other day and she happened to see my badge with a picture of me that is far out of date. She was distracted by it, so I hid it from her view. The student started to demand that I show her the picture and that she would not do her work until I did. This lack of respect is common in most students and can be draining and hard to address.