"sNOw school"

Wow, another crazy week. I have been in the classroom for 10 days, but I have only seen the students on 5 of those days. This week started out with a holiday so school was closed. On Tuesday, we were blessed with a full day of instruction before being slammed with snow on Wednesday, which closed school for the rest of the week. School was out for staff and students on Wednesday and Thursday, and Friday was an optional teacher workday with a 3 hour delay. However, my CE decided she was not going in and advised me not to make my 40 minute commute because the roads surrounding the school were still pretty bad. We texted back and forth for a little while and decided on a plan for Monday. I was suppose to pick up a class on Monday. This is still the plan, but I will pick up the last class of the day and observe her modified plans during the other periods, which I will then "copy" for the last period.

Overall, I would rate this week a 3. Nothing extraordinary bad happened, it was just a little frustrating to only have school 1 day. With it being the end of the semester, and students facing benchmarks January 29- February 2, we are desperately trying to get all of the content in. It's a scary feeling knowing that the students may not get an adequate amount of time to practice new concepts before the benchmarks. This is where I have learned and experienced first hand how important it is for teachers to take advantage of every possible minute of instructional time. Next week, we will really have to buckle down, keep the students focused, and get the content with as much practice as possible in.

This week, for standard 1 (NCPTS), I had the opportunity to sit in on the School Improvement Team meeting. My CE participates in this committee, so I will have more opportunities like this in the future. While I only observed, it was beneficial to see how these meetings go and I picked up on some things that I could do to help improve the school. A lot of these were just little things, like standing in the hallway during class change, but its all the little things that come together to help make the school great. For standard 2, I was able to sit down with my CE this week and discuss, and document my own notes, on the students and their different needs and abilities: the highs and the lows, who had 504s, BIPs, IEPs, who faced issues at home, who was defiant, who was a good helper, etc. I used my seating chart to make little notes and reminders until I am able to commit all the students to memory. For standard 3, I printed copies of the 7th grade math standards, and their unpacking documents, and began looking at the ones I will be teaching during my time in the classroom. For standard 4, I planned my first set of lesson plans, which I will implement next week as I begin to pick up classes. Majority of these lessons will probably not go as I had planned due to the snow this week. However, adapting my lessons plans to meet the needs of the students is just another part of facilitating learning. For standard 5, I spent a lot of time paying attention to how instruction and learning takes place in this classroom. I made notes and thought about how I can best continue this instruction in the near future.

For my portfolio, I have almost completed my classroom website, I just have a few more things to tweak. I have been using the portfolio tracker to make sure I am staying caught up and that I am prepared for Saturday's seminar.

I hope everyone has a great week! See you all tomorrow for a wonderfully long day of edTPA.