the classroom from HECK!

it's a long one!

Backround:

So in case no one knew I am a student at NAU distance learning at PVCC. I am going to school for Early Childhood Education which will enable me to teach preschool through 3rd grade. Each semester we have been required to do 45 observation hours in a classroom. We call this the "practicum". I am in my last semester of classess and starting in January I will begin student teaching (which is where i am actually like the teacher and she/he just watches me and helps etc..)

I really do love going in the classroom. It makes me feel like okay i do want to do this still! it makes writing essays and going to class all worth it. As soon as i hit the front office i get excited. Like the smell of playground sand puts me at ease. I feel at home and I really truely cannot wait to have my own class one day. HOWEVER, I know it will not always be easy and scary classrooms remind me of that!

Present:

So I started my practicum yesterday for this semester(i am somewhat of a procrstinator on these things..so i have to do 45 hours by Dec. 5) I was only in the classroom with students yesterday for an hour and then i did all my interview stuff with the teacher during prep. In just that hour I observed that this class did not have a very firm classroom managment plan in place. At one point the teacher was running after two students barking "if you want your jelly bean you better be good"

Today:

I was a little worried but excited because I always get excited when I go in the classroom! So today I started off again. I was determined to be positive and learn as much as I could! ugh but this class is CRAZY! so the teacher has centers (which i think are soo good for learning) but they were either not functioning or what i feel as developmentally inapropriate.

The listening center didnt work yet the teacher rotated kids there anyways. So i went to investigate all the tangled cords and headphones. I got everything back in order and the kids were on task.

Then I went to check out the writing center. Which was students sitting on the carpet writing their site words on white boards..none of them were really doing it or at least they didnt fully understand what they were writing.

Then the Individual work center caught my attention. The students were to fill in these little boxed letter spaces with the correct words...i dont know how to explain it unless i show you so here is a pic....do not laugh i made it in Paint! So anyways the idea was to fit the correct words in the boxes and then match with the pictures. I DO NOT THINK KINDERGARTE SHOULD BE DOING THIS! i mean most of them didn't understand that it actually made words they were just trying to fill in the boxes and draw lines. and the other half would just sit there and be like "I dunno". The teacher even looked up and said to me that if it's to hard they can flip the page and just color. BUT! when she had explained the centers to everyone she said "(AND I QUOTE!) The individual work center is for all my SMART students to do" I swear she said that so what am i suposed to say "oh dont worry kid i know you cant do it it's only for the smart students." NO! So I turned individual work in to a small group and we knocked it out..sorta.

So each time the centers were to switch I would go get the listening center up and running and then i would go to the individual work center to help them. It was kinda stressful and I havent even got to the good stuff yet!

So think back to my first visit yesterday when te teacher was running screamin about jelly beans. Well there are two students on individual contracts to help them with their discipline throughout the day(which is why they get jelly beans(I still do not think this is good but whatever..)if it worked great BUT IT DOES NOT!) so anyways these two are very cute and smart children BUT OMG do they need some discipline BADDDLY! so of course during math I am sat at a table with the two lovely boys wo are crazy and these two girls who really are okay just a little slower at the math. but all together itwas awful! they were all feeding off of eachother and it was whole group math so even though i was sitting with them it was suposed to be the teacher teaching. One boy sitting with the group was refusing to do his work. When I asked him to "show me how you can color in 5 red fish" he told me "NO, I am not doing it." Then I said that he had to do it or woud lose free time and he told me "You're not the boss of me" he also threw in that "I hate you" and proceded to throw his rubber braclet at my HEAD! so as you can see this was going so wonderful! the teacher came over to check on everyone and the girls were kind of making it through and she seemed to almost not even notice how bad the boys were being. I was a little overwhelmed mostly because it is hard when your just the helper and you dont really know where your line is in disciplining the students. UGH so i tried a few things and he eventually got up and was standing behind the teacher playing with her papers and acting out.

After math it was time for lunch.... WHEW!

I went to shellys to have lunch and break with Petyl. It did recharge me a little bit...

When I came back to school the kids were coming in from their specials and the boy(who hated me) came up and gave me a big sweaty hug....now you have to know i was thinking BIPOLAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ugh whatever so they did there story and fun centers (again with the boy running to all different centers and the other boy crying in the middle of the room fo like 5 minutes before being taken to another classroom) then at the end during clean up uhm the boy that hates and loves me RAN i mean RAN out of the classroom! I didnt even see him but the teacher all of a sudden ran after him. Then the boy for the rest of the day continued to be crazy throwing his shoes getting up and moving a table in the middle of circle....it was WILD!

Now after this whole experience you have to be wondering about this teacher....she told me she has been a teacher for 12 years. And i knew this was in no way possible i mean if that had been happening for 12 years she would be dead literally. Turns out it is her second year in the classroom she had been a resource teacher so basically she dd a lot of one on one all day.

It really gave me a great visual of why building classroom managment is the most important thing and that it must be done right in the begining. I really feel for the teacher because she has good ideas and she is trying but failing horribly on the discipline end. I do look forward to going back just because it is always good to learn what not to do! but i must say i am a little nervous about bipolar boy....

hopefully one day i will be like Harry Wong(like the king of classroom managment) and this will never be an issue

a cute story about the day to end on:

a little girl came up to me and asked "are you a teacher or a mommy or a kid?"

I said, "Well I am going to be a teacher and I am a mommy too"

and she said "Oh I thought you were a kid."

Then all the other ones around me started whispering "Oh shes a mommy" and

another girl said "do you have a boyfriend"

I said, "Nope i have a husband tho."

then another girl asked "do you have a boy or a girl?"

"girl"

"what is her name"

"Petyl"

"Pedal is what you do on a bike!"

"No her name is petyl like a flower PETAL"

"OHHH, okay"

they were all SOO cute even Bipolar! I LOVE KIDS! even when they're crazy.....