1st Week in the Classroom

Wow! What a week! This was my first week in the classroom and it was a doozy. The week started out on Monday with the students being sent home at 11:15 due to a chance of ice. The teachers, however, stayed, which gave me a chance to talk with my CE quite a bit and plan out how we wanted the semester to go. Tuesday began with a 3 hour delay for both students and staff which resulted in another day of very limited instruction time. On Wednesday we had a normal day, but it was "Wonderful Wednesday" at my school which basically just means it was club day. Every Wednesday there is an alternate schedule and the last hour of the day is set aside for students to do clubs. Each teacher leads a certain club for 6 weeks and the students usually get their top choice of which club to attend. There are all kinds of clubs but some include scavenger hunt club, Disney club, sports clubs, coloring club, nail painting club,...the list goes on and on. My CE leads the scavenger hunt club and I will pick up this responsibility in a few weeks when I take over. Moving on to Thursday, we had a normal instruction day with a normal schedule. This was my first chance to observe how a "normal day" went at my school. On Friday, my grade level had their ELA NC Check In. This is just a state mandated benchmark for English - Language Arts. So, we had another crazy schedule. Out of the whole week we had one normal day. It was certainly a wonky week, and I was constantly on my toes,  but it was interesting and enlightening to see how my CE continuously had to change her plans and take advantage of her spotty instruction time. Despite the craziness, I would rate my week a 5 out of 5. I am absolutely in love my school, my CE, the students, the administration, and other staff members. I can't wait to start taking over in the classroom and becoming more involved.

Since this was my first week in this classroom, I spent majority of the time observing and "getting my bearings." I focused on how my CE implemented her instruction and tried to start making plans and mental notes for how I wanted to continue that instruction when I take over. I reflected (NCPTS 5) a lot this week on how the school and my specific classroom ran, and tried to "set my mind" to a teacher mindset. Later in the week I started focusing more on getting to know the students and communicating with them while trying to establish myself as a leader for them (NCPTS 1). I've began making notes about some of the different needs of my students and started planning for how to differentiate my instruction for them. My 2nd period has several different needs to be addressed. While none of them fall into the range of needing a resource math, some of them do qualify for a resource ELA and those issues trickle into the math classroom as well. I do not have any inclusion classes but there is definitely a lot of differentiation to be addressed. I focused a lot on these students during my observations so I can best be prepared to facilitate learning for them (NCPTS 4).

Next week, I will continue to observe what is happening in the classroom, but I have plans to take more steps to interact with the students and start to establish myself as a teacher in the classroom.

For my portfolio, I have started putting together my classroom website and plan to have that finished and posted this week. I also have created and set up a Live Binder to start putting materials in for my portfolio. I have a "portfolio checklist" saved right on my screen so I am continuously reminded of what I need to be working on. Getting behind is not an option for me this semester.

I hope everyone has a great week!