Week 9 Reflection

This week has been quite the experience for me! My host-teacher has left for 2 to 3 weeks due to surgery. Although I do have a substitute teacher who is a retired school teacher, it is still an eye-opening experience for me. I am the one in the classroom who knows the routines, is responsible for keeping the students on track, and I am also the only true "regular" figure in the classroom that the students are used to. So far everything has gone well, and the other first grade teachers have been a blessing with keeping me on track, and making sure everything is going smoothly.

Since I am completing my full-time teaching hours, I have been getting papers graded, teaching all of the lessons, and keeping the students on track for the entire day. It has been such a great experience and I cannot wait to have my own classroom in the near future. The students in my internship classroom right now have been a true challenge for me with behavior, but I do feel as if I could handle anything in the future. I also have learned ways of how to deal with those behavior problems without them effecting the other students' instruction time.

I have noticed some students have a very difficult time staying on track during whole group instruction. I believe this could be because they are in groups within their tables. It has been a while since we changed the seating chart, so I am thinking that something needs to be done with this. Since there are so few students in this classroom and we have the area to work with, I am thinking about trying out a classroom arrangement in an "L" shape to see if this helps the students focus any more than what they do. I just feel that there are many students in this classroom that have attention problems, and I think they might benefit from a different classroom setup. However, it may not be effective, so I would like to try it out just to see.

Other than that, everything else is going well. I am beginning to realize that the weeks are dwindling down and I honestly do not know how I am going to be able to say goodbye to those 19 students. They have all touched my heart and I will miss them dearly! Thank goodness I can go back and visit in the spring! I cannot wait to see how much they grow and mature from this semester to the end of the next!