Journals
1 #PREP
My first week of student teaching has been very informative and influential. The students have not yet come in and I have been completing teacher preparation training and setting the classroom up as well as doing some prep work for some of the projects the students will be creating. Even though the students have not yet been in the classroom, This week has really helped me see and feel a shift from becoming a student to a teacher. During the first week, I have been setting the classroom, talking to other teachers, and discussing projects and assignments with my mentor teacher which have all really helped me understand what it is like becoming a teacher and having all of these students in my classroom. The environment at the school is very welcoming and It is really exciting seeing my career as well as myself grow so much in just a week.
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With the teacher preparations there have not been many opportunities to teach, however there are shifts of learning and being a teacher. The training I have gone to during teacher preparation have helped me learn how to become a successful educator as well as connect with the students once they do come in. After the training, or in between, there is a shift from learning all of that to preparing to actually teach and welcome new students in. Since there has been no students yet I feel as though I have not made much of a presence in the classroom with the students, however I have put a lot of time and effort into setting up and preparing so that in a way feels like putting my presence there as well.
For my Art journal I have started a sketch. Sketching I feel is like planning for an art piece. Getting my thoughts on there, have an idea, and plan what I want to finalize. I added this for my first journal entry because I have just been planning and preparing for teaching, and these are able to tie together this way. I am very excited to meet all my students and see them grow throughout the semester!
2 #UnbiasedOpinions
During my student teaching I have been thinking about a social justice lesson to do once. I have gone back and forth with different topics such as equality, mental health, etc. My first half of student teaching is k-5 (elementary) students in which I am uncertain if this is the best thing to do for these ages and I am leaning more towards doing it for my second half with the older students later on. I believe the two topics I think I am most passionate about would be equality and mental health. I want to try to create a lesson plan that does not give an exact opinion about these therefore I am trying to think of the best way to approach them in which I think higher grades will succeed better at this topic.
Some struggles I believe I am thinking about for this lesson is I do not want to offend anyone
and I want to be completely unbiased and let the students develop their own opinions and ideas about these topics because they are so heavy. I also do not want other students to possibly offend anyone else whether or not it was intentional. I think to resolve this I have to be super transparent with the instructions and be careful with word choice and how to portray it unbiased. My mentor teacher as of now is unsure that she wants this particular topic in the lesson because of the elementary students. I believe it would be challenging for them to maybe understand and form a true opinion on anything as well.
The assigned readings for this journal give some very good examples on difficult topics and also it is very unbiased and it helped the students create their own meanings and thoughts on these topics as well. For example in the “PostSecrets'' lesson example, I think it is a really nice way to have voices be heard, and while the students created their note it was able to let them form an opinion on how much it was able to impact them and maybe if they connected to it as well. In the reading it stated that it helped the students feel closer to whoever wrote the note even though no one knows, and it made people know that they maybe weren’t alone in their feelings and gave people some more confidence. I also liked in the lesson that the teacher stated no opinion or anything and it was really up to the students and what they felt and thought.
Within this journal I have continued my next step in teaching which is planning it out and finalizing some things. In the lest one it was just a sketch of this picture and now it is more of a drawing and complete picture. There are many different kinds of flowers which can relate to social justice and being unbiased in the classroom. I believe I am really starting to understand the layout of teaching and how to interact with students by being unbiased and letting them form their own opinions and feelings as well.
3 #Organization #Connections #Confidence
Something that I have noticed in my student teaching is organization. I believe one thing that will help me in the future to enhance my teaching skills is to have organization within the classroom as well as myself. During student teaching, my mentor teacher has taught me a lot about how to be organized such as color coding, labeling, and making goals/ check off lists for the day.
Making connections and building relationships with my students is another thing I believe is the most important thing to help reinforce my teaching. With building connections with my students I believe it will help everything in my classroom such as classroom management and my confidence with teaching as well. During my student teaching so far, I have gotten to build some connections with some of the students and I believe it has helped me specifically with both of those.
The last thing that will help my teaching is confidence and courage. As my student teaching has gone on, I have been building more and more confidence with my students as well as my voice. Keeping my confidence will extremely help my teaching skills because I feel like I will not have to think about anything in specific and only have one thing in my mind, therefore missing other things that are happening in class.
4 #SelfCare
In the beginning of my second placement, it was a hard and confusing transition. Walking into a school that was already 8 weeks into the semester was challenging and especially walking into high school and middle school classes. I had begun working very hard to make those connections with the students while trying to show them my authority and create lesson plans for them to further their education. I believe I have gained more confidence into my second placement and I started it with self care. I began to do things with the students such as projects, drawings, and paintings which helped me gain relationships with them because we would talk while all of us were creating art, and it also helped me get back into my passions within art as well.
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During my first placement at the elementary school I worked and prepped for the students non-stop, which of course was rewarding when I saw them creating and having fun, however I did not have any time to create or do the things I wanted/needed to do to stay happy. Of course I made wonderful connections with the elementary students, but I feel as though I needed more of a nudge to relate and connect with the high school and middle school students, therefore creating with them was a perfect way to talk with them and feel comfortable.
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I created an image using pencil and markers to represent my self care journey. I believe this is able to show an important transition from my first placement into my second placement because I had to find self care in order to successfully transition and grow as an educator. Overall I am very excited to continue my second placement and continue my growth and transition using self care and connecting with my students more!
5 #ProfessionalGrowth
As an educator, I believe we are never done learning. There are always multiple opportunities to continue growth and knowledge on the classroom as well as the content. Professional development is able to do this for educators and it is very important because of that reason. It is able to help us explore more with our content and our students.
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In the beginning of my student teaching, there were multiple meetings I attended in which I believe helped me grow and prepare as a teacher. They had talked and discussed classroom management, behavior, and many more topics involving education. I feel as though I was able to understand more about creating connections with my students and that is one of the reasons it is most important to me because I feel as though building relationships and making strong connections with students will in turn help most everything within your classroom.
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There was a meeting I did attend about behavior and discipline that I felt was very informative as well and it was something I wanted to improve on as a teacher without damaging a connection with a student. From this meeting, I was able to learn some ways and ideas to manage the classroom so there may be less discipline, but also ways to discipline that is quick and helps the relationship with the student rather then hurt it. In the meeting they had offered to have the teacher talk to the student individually if behavioral issues continue, this is something I have done in the past which has been helpful. I feel as though this information and multiple others has helped me tremendously to grow as a teacher and individual and continue to grow as I am in the classroom using these methods and finding what works.
6 #lotus
My student teaching experience was able to show me so many different things and ways to help me become a successful educator. I was able to learn some elements in order to create a predictable, caring, and positive learning environment such as stating clear expectations for the class, Telling the students the objectives for the day so they are prepared, and making valuable and meaningful connections with the students/class. All of these are able to show a caring and predictable environment.
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Diversity is very important within the classroom as well and I want my students to feel safe and included. During my student teaching, I let my students have their own voice within the classroom and have a choice within their art. I feel as though this is able to help the students let out their differences and show more culture in the classroom. I also was able to teach more about different cultures within art at my elementary placement which showed the students new ways of thinking and art techniques.
I was able to differentiate so much within the class at both placements and I found talking to the students independently and getting to know them as well as how they learn and how I can help them better understand.
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Lastly, throughout my student teaching, I was able to have my students reflect on what they learned and created. Within my first placement, I believe there can be some adjustments and improvements with the students reflective activities. Because of it being the elementary, I mostly taught one day lessons in order to introduce the next unit they needed to achieve. That being said, the reflective activities were mostly discussions within the whole class, which was still very valuable as the students said very interesting things and it seemed as though they really understood the content. I had them do a gallery walk for one of my lessons which was great, however I wish they had longer to finish their projects thoroughly as well as longer to reflect. In my second placement one of our reflections was on the social Justice unit. This reflection activity turned out very well as I had them write an artist statement following an artist statement flow chart I had made with questions to answer about their projects. Each one of these were well written and they were able to reflect very well on this project. Looking through their reflections I was able to see how much they had gained through creating it.
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Looking through all of the journals throughout this semester, I have talked a lot about growth, building relationships, and self care. I feel as though in the beginning of my student teaching I struggles a lot with finding a balance and I was trying to find my "voice" and confidence in the classroom. After my student teaching I feel as though there is still room for improvement in the future and I am definitely going to continue to learn new ways of teaching and managing the classroom, however I feel as though I have grown so much in that aspect and have gained more confidence throughout my student teaching. For my journal I created a lotus flower from acrylic paint. Lotus flowers are able to symbolize growth and perseverance which I feel as though is able to symbolize my student teaching experience. There were rough times during it, however I was able to grow and persevere through it all and become a successful educator and will continue to grow in the future.