Week Thirteen

I began full time teaching this week. On Monday, I was so nervous about teaching my students full time. I knew that I had carefully planned the entire week, however, I was terrified that my preparations weren’t going to be enough.

While I did carefully plan, I learned this week that student responses to the lesson will determine its appropriateness. For example, I planned a Thanksgiving budgeting lesson for Wednesday. This lesson was supposed to take only 45 minutes. It took one group two 45 minutes sessions spread over two days, and the other group still has not completed the lesson. Because of this, several of the lessons planned for Thursday did not get taught. My perfectionist mind struggles with falling behind. Naturally, I want to run on schedule and complete the planned lessons, however, this week I had to remind myself that if I rush through the lesson just to get to the next material then I am taking away from my students. Excellent teaching needs to be student led. If my student’s understanding of the content doesn’t drive what I teach then I am not doing a good job at teaching them.

Along with being stretched and challenged in my actual teaching, my classroom management has also been challenged. In my Transitional classroom, I have a wide variety of students. With that variety of students comes a vast number of diverse behaviors. Some of my behaviors range from defiant/task avoidance to anxiety driven. I can’t say that I’ve figured their behaviors out because I haven’t. Each individual is so unique. There were a lot of times this week when I had no idea what to say or do in response to a student behavior, however, I am fervently taking notes and observations. Research has aided me in giving ideas with how to respond to behaviors. More than anything, I am so thankful for the support of my cooperating teacher. She never lets me sink even when I feel as though I am. Between my observations, research, and the aide of cooperating teacher I know that I will learn how best to manage behaviors in my classroom.

A large part of special education is the related services that my students receive. Although all of my students are ambulatory some of them has Occupational and Physical Therapy every week. Many of students see the Speech and Language Pathologist for therapy as well. This past Friday, I took my students out into the community. We went to the library to complete a library assignment that required the students to utilize the resources found at the library. While there, the SLP tagged along to get some minutes in. All week prior to our visit the SLP and I were in contact about student goals and ways that they can be assessed at the library. The assignment the students worked on while there was essentially crafted by myself and the SLP in order to make sure my objectives for the lesson and her speech and language goals were being assessed. This level of collaboration is crucial in teaching Special Education.

Illinois Professional Teaching Standard 8 says, “The competent teacher builds and maintains collaborative relationships to foster cognitive, linguistic, physical, and social and emotional development. This teacher works as a team member with professional colleagues, students, parents or guardians, and community members.” This week, I got to work along side the SLP to aide in the linguistic development of my students. Performance indicator 8K says that the competent teacher, “participates in collaborative decision-making and problem-solving with colleagues and other professionals to achieve success for all students” Together we created an assignment that met both of our goals and objectives and was meaningful and formative to the development of our students as adults.

Classroom Confidential

My transition classroom is all about teaching students meaningful, functional skills to aide them in living outside of transition. Students go out into the community every single Friday and go out on service learning trips every other Tuesday. While reading Schmidt chapter seven I found myself, “Amening” to a lot of the things she said. Connecting content the is taught within the classroom to the community make content authentic and gives it a purpose. While this concept is exceptionally true for the transition classroom I am currently in it is also true for all classrooms. In my transition classroom, going out into the community is an authentic way that we connect what the students learn in the classroom with reality, however, in the general education classroom, it is difficult to go out into the community. Schmidt talks about how connecting to the community can be as simple as showing students pictures to help them relate the content outside of the classroom. In my fifth grade placement, my cooperating teacher stressed using pictures to teach new vocabulary. She always told me that aides in giving the students a visual representation but it also created connections. In a small, simple way we were bringing the community into our classroom rather than taking our classroom into the community. Regardless of where one teaches the community is our greatest asset to accessing and building knowledge.

Week Twelve

Week 12:

I officially started teaching this week! While not every lesson went as smoothly as hoped I was so pleased with the way it turned out. It has been quite the transition from fifth grade to transition. In fifth grade my lesson were fast paced, dynamic, and filled with “Why?” questions. In transition, my lessons are simple yet so important, slow paced, and filled with straight forward, “What?” questions. My transitioning adults are taught life skills, daily living skills, vocational skills, and social skills. The lessons, while still being academic, are geared to teach the students skills appropriate for transition.

My teacher and I taught a cooking lesson to the students. We made chocolate croissants. The students practiced making an easy snack individually. Teaching the students to make chocolate croissants is teaching them daily living skills. It’s a basic skill that the students can use in their daily lives. After making the croissants, students completed a comprehension check. This lesson partnered daily living with basic reading and comprehension. Teaching transition is all about preparing our students for life outside of school while still teaching them academic skills.

Illinois Professional Teaching Standard 2 says, “The competent teacher has in-depth understanding of content area knowledge that includes central concepts, methods of inquiry, structures of the disciplines, and content area literacy. The teacher creates meaningful learning experiences for each student based upon interactions among content area and pedagogical knowledge, and evidence-based practice.” Performance indicator 2N states that the competent teacher, “facilitates learning experiences that make connections to other content areas and to life experiences.” The most important thing that a Special Education Transition teacher needs to have is a knowledge of how to connect content area and academic content to daily living, social, and vocational skills. In my lesson planning, I have become better and better at making content appropriate for transitioning adults. For example, I taught a consumer math lesson about counting bills and buying items. The activity in the lesson was called, “What’s in my wallet?” Students were given a price for an item and had to count the amount of money in their wallet to determine if they had enough money to buy the item. This lesson used the basic skill of counting money and comparing quantities partnered with the life skill of purchasing items.

I begin full time teaching Monday! This coming week is jammed packed with valuable life skills and appropriate academic content. I am so excited to continue my growth and learning in Transition.

Classroom Confidential

Teaching requires teachers that are lifelong learners. Teaching is a profession that is constantly changing and evolving. Teachers need to be lifelong learners that are willing to change and evolve with its profession. There are dozens of reasons for a teacher to be a lifelong learner. Teachers touch so many generations during their time as a teacher. As we touch different generations we need to have the necessary skills and resources to teach each generation. Technology is always expanding. Teachers need to understand the technology students are interacting with daily to best connect with their students. Professional Development helps teachers stay current with practices and tools that they can utilize in their classrooms.

Week Eleven

As I continue my journey of adjusting to my new, but wonderful classroom I am learning more and more each day. In the past week, I have developed relationships with my students and coworkers. My classroom has two paraprofessionals and one classroom aide. They are all absolutely wonderful! I have appreciated how much support I receive from the support staff and my cooperating teacher. They are always willing to listen to my questions and offer guidance where they see needed.

This week, I observed a lot of behaviors. Several of my students have a primary diagnosis of Autism. With autism comes a lot of anxiety due to schedule changes. As a result, I’ve had the opportunity of watching my teacher work magic in deescalating student’s anxieties and behaviors. I have learned so much about the kinds of redirections that my students respond best to. Most of the class responds well to being prompted to remain flexible. Student will often finish a sentence such as, “We are going to be,” with the word, “flexible.” Praising the students by saying things like, “Great job being flexible.” Also reinforces their flexibility and is an excellent to remind students to be flexible.

I also found myself teaching a lot of impromptu lessons. Because we have two classes, our AM class and our PM class, my teacher modelled teaching the lessons to the AM group and gave the opportunity to teach the same content to the PM group. On Thursday, I got to teach a lesson where students practiced reading schedules. Together, we practiced reading a family weekend schedule. We answered questions that required us to read the schedule and tell time. I was also given the opportunity to introduce a lesson involving a job description to work at the Clothes Barn as a dressing room assistant. I got to talk about the skills needed for the job and the kind of work students would do as a dressing room assistant.

Fridays we go out into the community for community education. This Friday I got to go with my students to the store. The AM class went to the dollar store. We were split into two groups. Each group was given $25 dollars to spend. One group was assigned a little boy between the ages of 5 and 9. The other group was assigned a little girl between the ages of 5 and 9. Each group picked items for their assigned child. We bought items like toys, hygiene products, puzzles, books, or crayons. The items that students bought are going to be put into shoeboxes and sent to Operation Christmas Child. The shoeboxes will be given to children around the world in need.

The PM class went to Wal-Mart to buy the necessary supplies for our cooking class. On Monday, we picked three dishes to make for cooking class. We picked one breakfast, one lunch, and one snack. The students chose to make cinnamon toast for breakfast, macaroni and cheese for lunch, and chocolate croissants for snack. The PM class was divided into two groups each group was given a list of ingredients for our chosen dishes. I learned so much from getting to go shopping with the students.

Classroom Confidential

1.       Social justice is something that all teachers, especially Christian teachers, need to be well educated on. Because we live in a broken world tainted by sin we often encounter issues in the way that people are being treated. As Christians we are called to love and serve everyone. Understanding social justice and social justice reforms as a Christian educator helps me to love my students and serve them. Schmidt argues that students want to discuss social injustices but don’t know how to. They need educated adults to help them learn to talk about social injustices. Teachers are examples love and equality to our students. Students also gain many skills from social justice projects such as: problem solving, critical thinking, persuasive speaking and writing, risk taking, awareness of community needs, and personal convictions. It’s crucial for teachers to know how to facilitate social justice discussions.