Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Snow Days

One of the benefits of teaching is snow days! But, when you are a student teacher, snow days are not too great. My first day at Eastern Montgomery High School was on Friday but have not been back since due to the 10+ inches of snow we got this weekend. While one or two days off is nice, I need to get back in to the schools! Anywhere, here are some reflections on my first day.

Intro to Sec. Math/Personal Living and Finance
Mrs. Ratliff's first period is a remedial math class where they talk about business and finance, too. On Friday, we played the game Life and let other students catch up on work. I helped one group of students with the rules and how to play the game. First off, I was very surprised that no one had played the board game before. That was quite a staple in my childhood, but I guess these families didn't play a lot of board games together. Second, many of the students could not make change or figure out how much they got if they passed two paydays. I can tell that I will have a lot of work to do with this class, but I'll have a lot of fun coming up with some fun activities and tasks for them to do in class!

Algebra I, Part 2
Mrs. Ratliff has two Algebra I Part 2 classes. A few of the students are the same from last semester, but some of the students in Part 1 had failed. There are also students in both classes that took Algebra I Part I in last year, so they are having problems recalling the information they learned. A lot of the students are really disrespectful, so I'll have to establish myself as an authority figure so that they will respect me. The way they were treating Mrs. Ratliff on Friday is not how they should be behaving, and I will not put up with it!

Planning
Planning is fourth block, which makes the end of the day come really slow. We talked about what I would be teaching, and my first unit is on polynomials and factoring. I'm pretty excited about it, because I loved that stuff when I learned it and it'll be a challenge for me. I can use some manipulatives that I've learned about, and hopefully I'll get a good variety of types of lessons to practice. I guess the hardest part will just be where to start!

Overall, it was an interesting but fun first day. I have my work cut out for me, but I am ready for the challenge and excited to do so!

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