Lovin' Field!!

Today I had the opportunity to take over in the classroom for a few hours while my cooperating teacher attended a district meeting. I worked with the kids from 8 until 12 and had so much fun!! The substitute was kind enough to just sit in the classroom while I taught; even though I know it was hard for her and she was getting tired from sitting for so long.

Mrs. Johnson is an incredible teacher and I am learning so much from her! She has set up a literacy program in her classroom that is working miracles. Students who had started the year without even the simplest letter sound recognition are making great progress and are reading levels ahead of where they started. There are a few students in the class that have learning disabilities or disorders. One particular little boy is making so much progress! I even teared up yesterday after he made a spectacular breakthrough in his reading. (What a stinkin' cutie!) These kids are amazing! I could go on and on about the awesome things these kids are doing and how darling and sweet they are. I am already so attached to them and I'm so glad I get to come back in January.

2. Share 3 exact quotes that are meaningful to you, and explain why they matter to you.



"A wise teracher understands that virtually everything in the classroom will work better if it "belongs to us" rather than "belonging to me." This was a concept that is relatively new to me. I remember sitting in classrooms and knowing that it was the teachers class, I had very few classes where I felt I had an input on anything. I excelled in the classes where students were responsible for their work and I believe I came away with much more than just being able to follow directions. I want my classroom to be a place where students can feel they can ask questions, make comments and express themselves. I want them to learn to be responsible, capable young people. I think that if I can relax enought to hand things over to the students that I might not otherwise hand over, and if I can accept their efforts as being good enough, even if it's not how I would do it, then I will help my students succeed in that goal.



"Although teacher's role bears some of the hallmarks of the counselor, parent, coach, social worker, and so on, those are not the teacher's central role. It is the mandate of the teacher to teach." I think that it is sometimes easy to want to extend our role as teacher into more of a parent, or counselor, but our main concern should be teaching. I have the tendency to want to sit down and get to know people. I want to have a strong relationship with that person and feel the need to "fix" their problems. I know this is something I will have to work on as a teacher, because I can't allow myself to focus on fixing students problems.



"Demanding curriculum and instruction also means the teacher ensures that every student develops the habits of mind and attitudes, or metaskills, necessary for success in school and in life." This is how we help students achieve in life! When students learn the value of hard work and perserverence they become strong, independent, thoughtful, problem solving people. They can face a challenge, overcome that challenge and learn to enjoy not only the success, but the challenge itself. My main concern, and therefore goal, is that students can transfer what they learn in "our" classroom into their lives. Students need to know that everything they are learning in our classroom is applicable to their lives outside the class. I plan to do this by helping sdtudents to think critically about what they are learning and how it might be useful in other areas of their schooling or life. One of my favorite ideas is bringing in a guest speaker who will help students see the connection between a content area, such as math or science, into a career choice that they might not otherwise expect a connection to be made.

Reflect on what you learned about creating community in your classroom from our visitor, Sylvia Allan.

Morning Meetings build community by giving students the opportunities to get to know each other and build relationships. They learn things about their peers that might not ever have known and are able to make connections with each other. It creates and builds students that care about themselves and others. They begin to share each others happinesses, sadness, success and failures. They learn to empathize. They learn skills like meeting and greeting new people, sharing, communicating, working together to achieve a common goal and they have Fun together! Loved the class! It was great to learn more about how implementing morning meeting can transform a classroom into a safe and exciting place to be. Thank you for putting so much effort into getting a presenter into the classroom to teach us more about how to implement morning meetings. I learned a lot and had fun.

2a. What does the following phrase mean, and what you think about it? “…emotions trump learning.”

I'm reminded of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. We cannot learn and participate in the classroom until we feel safe and our emotional and physical needs are met first. I love the quote that says "They don't care how much you know, until you show them how much you care." I believe that students need to feel validated and emotionally excepted in your classroom before they can open their minds to learning. It means that we should take care of our students emotional needs before we worry about teaching them the curriculum.

1b. On page 10 of this reading assignment, Tomlinson says, “… we teach responsively when we understand the need to teach the human beings before us as well as to teach the content with which we are charged. … [It] is important to begin with the conviction that we are no longer teaching if what we teach is more important than who we teach or how we teach.” What does this mean to you?

This means that the students' needs come before the content curriculum. Students will desire to learn when they realize the teacher cares for each of them individually. Students should feel confident in knowing that the teacher is there to teach them and is not there to strictly teach curriculum. Teachers should make it clear that they are there for the students, not for the content they are teaching.

Reflection # 10 (6 on class website)

Field was a great learning experience. I was assigned to work in Mr. Van Orden's 5th grade class. Mr. Van Orden is not what you would call a typical teacher. He want students to enjoy his class, but most of all he wants to enjoy the teaching itself. He tries to keep things basic and light. Students are taught that if they manage themselves they will have more opportunities to do interesting things. Mr. Van Orden likes to turn the lessons over to the students. They explore and experiment to find solutions to problems on their own and in groups. The arts are not a particularly strong focus in his class, but he tries to incorporate music into the class. Students see an art specialist once a week, so the teachers do not have to worry about trying to find in the time to integrate it into their other subjects. I think this can be useful, but I think it would be better if students were able to relate art and music to the other subject areas. Laura and I tried to incorporate art by using pictures as primary sources and having students participate in an art project. Students were able to create a picture of one of the 3 founders we discussed in class. Students used geometric shapes and symmetry to create interesting pieces of art. We were impressed by how creative the students were and how easy it was to keep the students on task. We also had students create a graphic organizer that if we had time we would've had students decorate with pictures to go along with the information they had written in them. I think the students really enjoyed the lessons we planned for them and I learned a lot by putting what I've been learning into practice.

Reflection #9

This week was way too short! I wish we could've stayed just a little while longer. I ended up exceeding my hours by about 2 hours and I still wanted to stay longer. The students were warming up to us and I was feeling comfortable in the classroom. One of the students that I've been struggling to get engaged got a really bad bloody nose on Tuesday so I was able to help him out and connect with him a little bit more. The teacher is trying to keep this student on task, but he said he even has a hard time with him. We are all wondering if he has ADD, he just can't seem to sit still or follow instructions. Before we left the students thanked us for "making the lessons fun" some even told me they would miss me. I was able to take the students to one of their rotations and play a game with them while we waited for the other teacher to finish getting ready for us. The kids caught onto the game just as it was time to go in so it worked out perfectly. I said goodbye to them before class started and then headed off to work. I had a great experience and am going to miss being in a classroom every day. I'm really excited to be moving on and can't wait until I can start teaching a class of my own. So much Fun!!