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.