Okay, alright, so this week was a complete and utter roller coaster ride. I wasn't feeling well on Tuesday morning, so I spent the day mostly grouchy. Let me tell you something...NOT good for student teaching. Especially not for a student teacher who has decided (without cause) that it is solely her job to make all of the students behave throughout the morning. What a job that turned out to be. Looking back on the difference between this Tuesday and this Thursday, I already feel as though I have come miles. I spent most of the day on Tuesday and the better part of the day on Wednesday totally discombobulated, trying to make all of the students be quiet and listen. When is the real learning going to start if they can't keep still and let the teacher show them the learning? I have come to learn that it is happening all around me, even if I can't focus enough to see it. I am realizing that I am NOT the teacher. The teacher is a very lovely lady with several years of expereience under her belt, and I can't possibly expect myself to move at the languid pace that comes so effortlessly to her. I have resolved to spend the rest of my time sitting back a bit more and watching her.
I have to confess...fourth grade doesn't do it for me. I know that it is a different pace from the one I expect to maintain. Something about children confuses me. I can't wrap my brain around what it is like to be a child outside of my own experience as one. Due to my horrible long-term memory, I can't remember what it was like. I do remember that my own experience as a fourth grader is extremely different from the one that these kids are having. It was all desks in rows, seatwork all the time, homework and music class. At my school, in the fourth grade we were already switching classes to go to different teachers for different subjects. These kids are together all day long with the same teacher (with the occasional choir time or art class). Because of this, I think the kids tend to get a little more restless. However, students like this go all the time. They have the chance to really build on something without the bell interrupting. I am jealous of that sometimes, although I really think that I did well within the structured environment.
This week we started off with the gifted and talented teacher coming in to help the kids on a project. They were building a new and improved peanut butter sandwich. All of the kids brought in their special ingredients, built their sandwiches for evaluation of others. Of course, there were a lot of peanut butter and various kinds of candy sandwiches. The most unusual (and I must say, rather gross because I was the ONLY one brave enough to try) was a peanut butter, blueberry yogurt, BBQ sauce, and sprinkles sandwich. Yucky. The kids really seemed to get into it...when it was building the sandwich and tasting one anothers. The hard part came when they had to write evaluations of the sandwiches and turn them in. Here's an instance where play was great until it was interrupted by the work that had to be done. I even had someone come up and ask me "Do you know the origin of the sandwich?" I told him that I would look it, and he should too, and then the next week, we could compare our findings. (If anyone is interested, click here or here to find out what I discovered).
The rest of my time there was spent cleaning up and getting the kids ready to go out and play at recess and lunch.
Wednesday was another grouchy day (again-I don't recommend trying to deal with fourth graders with an Attitude (capital A).) The kids seemed to have super ants-in-their-pants and pretty much ran wild the whole day through. Because of this, I didn't really take a lot of notes or really even pay attention to what might have been happening. Later that night, at my meeting with my colleagues and my advisor, I had a bit of a nervous breakdown from all of the stress that I was inflicting on myself. He assured me that I had to step back and watch more to see what was going on. How could I recognize play and see how the teacher ran with it if I was constantly here and there shushing and trying to stop various misbehaviors. In a later email, he advised me to take that time to get to know my students as people. So Thursday was my first real attempt to do this.
Here's what I learned...(nicknames will be forth to protect the innocent)
Bug boy (as he will be called from here on out--by his own request) loves all things insecty and Star Wars related. He wants to know if I were a droid, what kind of droid would I be and who is my favorite character. I told him that I loved Anakin in episode three because he is way cool, even when he's becoming evil. He likes R2 and Chewy. He spends most of his free time either daydreaming or reading about insects.
DramaQueen: is obsessed with my drama career. She wants to know all the plays I've been in and she and her friends wrote a play of their own to discuss some of the migration themes that they are learning about. She is so far the most like me as a child.
Wicked: She will be henceforth called this not because she is badly behaved, much to the opposite, actually, but because she is currently reading the Gregory MacGuire title of the same name. Now, if you haven't read it, that book is HARD. It took me, super reader, who can read three novels in one day, a month to read it. It is complex and political and a lot of things. The fact that one of these fourth graders is reading it might be the most impressive thing I've seen so far. I haven't had a chance to discuss it with her, but I'm waiting for the opportunity.
More will come on the little people. Thursday was very peaceful for me when I wasn't trying to be the queen of the quiet classroom. I felt a lot of responsibility and stress lift from my shoulders, and I got to watch and learn more. Hopefully next week will be even better. MissTeacher and I are going to plan our little drama, which we will start planning on Wednesday. I'll keep you all updated from week-to-week to let you know how it is going. Thanks for reading, and feel free to comment at will :) Feedback is always appreciated.
I have to confess...fourth grade doesn't do it for me. I know that it is a different pace from the one I expect to maintain. Something about children confuses me. I can't wrap my brain around what it is like to be a child outside of my own experience as one. Due to my horrible long-term memory, I can't remember what it was like. I do remember that my own experience as a fourth grader is extremely different from the one that these kids are having. It was all desks in rows, seatwork all the time, homework and music class. At my school, in the fourth grade we were already switching classes to go to different teachers for different subjects. These kids are together all day long with the same teacher (with the occasional choir time or art class). Because of this, I think the kids tend to get a little more restless. However, students like this go all the time. They have the chance to really build on something without the bell interrupting. I am jealous of that sometimes, although I really think that I did well within the structured environment.
This week we started off with the gifted and talented teacher coming in to help the kids on a project. They were building a new and improved peanut butter sandwich. All of the kids brought in their special ingredients, built their sandwiches for evaluation of others. Of course, there were a lot of peanut butter and various kinds of candy sandwiches. The most unusual (and I must say, rather gross because I was the ONLY one brave enough to try) was a peanut butter, blueberry yogurt, BBQ sauce, and sprinkles sandwich. Yucky. The kids really seemed to get into it...when it was building the sandwich and tasting one anothers. The hard part came when they had to write evaluations of the sandwiches and turn them in. Here's an instance where play was great until it was interrupted by the work that had to be done. I even had someone come up and ask me "Do you know the origin of the sandwich?" I told him that I would look it, and he should too, and then the next week, we could compare our findings. (If anyone is interested, click here or here to find out what I discovered).
The rest of my time there was spent cleaning up and getting the kids ready to go out and play at recess and lunch.
Wednesday was another grouchy day (again-I don't recommend trying to deal with fourth graders with an Attitude (capital A).) The kids seemed to have super ants-in-their-pants and pretty much ran wild the whole day through. Because of this, I didn't really take a lot of notes or really even pay attention to what might have been happening. Later that night, at my meeting with my colleagues and my advisor, I had a bit of a nervous breakdown from all of the stress that I was inflicting on myself. He assured me that I had to step back and watch more to see what was going on. How could I recognize play and see how the teacher ran with it if I was constantly here and there shushing and trying to stop various misbehaviors. In a later email, he advised me to take that time to get to know my students as people. So Thursday was my first real attempt to do this.
Here's what I learned...(nicknames will be forth to protect the innocent)
Bug boy (as he will be called from here on out--by his own request) loves all things insecty and Star Wars related. He wants to know if I were a droid, what kind of droid would I be and who is my favorite character. I told him that I loved Anakin in episode three because he is way cool, even when he's becoming evil. He likes R2 and Chewy. He spends most of his free time either daydreaming or reading about insects.
DramaQueen: is obsessed with my drama career. She wants to know all the plays I've been in and she and her friends wrote a play of their own to discuss some of the migration themes that they are learning about. She is so far the most like me as a child.
Wicked: She will be henceforth called this not because she is badly behaved, much to the opposite, actually, but because she is currently reading the Gregory MacGuire title of the same name. Now, if you haven't read it, that book is HARD. It took me, super reader, who can read three novels in one day, a month to read it. It is complex and political and a lot of things. The fact that one of these fourth graders is reading it might be the most impressive thing I've seen so far. I haven't had a chance to discuss it with her, but I'm waiting for the opportunity.
More will come on the little people. Thursday was very peaceful for me when I wasn't trying to be the queen of the quiet classroom. I felt a lot of responsibility and stress lift from my shoulders, and I got to watch and learn more. Hopefully next week will be even better. MissTeacher and I are going to plan our little drama, which we will start planning on Wednesday. I'll keep you all updated from week-to-week to let you know how it is going. Thanks for reading, and feel free to comment at will :) Feedback is always appreciated.
posted by Jennifer Martin at 10:09 AM
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