Day 3 at Classic City High School 1/28/14

     My third day at Classic City with Mrs. Smith was spent observing her teach class.  I enjoyed watching her teach class because I was curious on how she taught.  I got to class a little bit early, but most of the students were already set up and ready for class to begin.  Mrs. Smith had to remind the class that we had five minutes before class actually started.  I took this time to look at her white boards to see what she had written on them.

     One white board had two lists of names of students that had perfect attendance or was recognized for academic achievement.  The names on the board would be awarded a gift certificate to a local restaurant or business, such as Zaxby's or Target.  I thought this was such a neat idea.  They use positive reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement.  I prefer this because I think awarding those who did what they were supposed to do is more effective than disciplining those that don't do what they were supposed to.  Then on the other board there were two lists. One list was positive actions and the other was negative actions.  Mrs. Smith had decided to start a class dojo where the students choose which actions get points and which actions lose points.  The points would then be added at the end of a week and depending on the amount of points you had you got certain privileges.   The positive actions included participation, not being on the cell phone, and helping others.  The negative actions included being gone from class too long, not being on task, and being on your cell phone.  I thought it was a great idea for the students to choose the actions because then they were able to say what they felt was important to recognize.  The students seemed to really like this idea and were eager to start the program.

     Mrs. Smith then started a powerpoint about clauses and phrases.  She was very good about not going too fast or too slow.  She made sure everyone had the notes before she went to the next slide.  She also made sure that everyone understood what the slide meant.  It was fun to watch the dynamic of Mrs. Smith and her students.  I could tell that they really respected her and wanted to please her.  It was also apparent that she respected them as well.  She would give them a hard time if they used words like aint while talking to her.  She told them that college professors wouldn't give them the time of day if they talked like that, but she also told them that it was okay to say it in informal settings.  She didn't condemn  them for using words that they were raised with.  It was things like that that made me realize that they respected her because she respected them.

     I really enjoyed observing her teach because it made me realize that I want to be somewhat like her.  I want to be able to joke around with my future students.  I want them to respect me and I will respect them.  Mrs. Smith is an incredible teacher who I hope I can be like in the future.

Day 2 at Classic City High School: 1/21/14

     A couple of days ago was my second day at CCHS.  As I was on my way to the high school I was thinking about everything that I needed to do when I got there.  I thought about signing in, then walking to the classroom, and then receiving my student.  I thought about what Mrs. Smith had told me the week before: they won't want your help, but you have to just give it to them anyway.  She told me not to get discouraged if they didn't open up to me and to just keep going.  I then walked in the building and signed in and went to Mrs. Smith's room where she told me to work with *Bill.

     I had gotten to her class relatively early so Bill was still hanging out with friends before school started.  I started to really look at her classroom and I realized that they had so much technology.  The class had a computer for each student and then some.  Not only did they have the technology, but it was a crucial part of her teaching.  She put the assignments on the projector for everyone to see.  If a student missed a day and needed the powerpoint that she had taught with earlier, she would send it to the student via email.  The students have to log in to a Clarke County web server that then lead them to their school emails.  It was incredible to see how much technology played into their daily lives at school.  Everything was done on the computers: notes, quizzes, tests.

     Bill came in when school started and he and I went to the library so we could work in a quieter environment together.  Mrs. Smith told me to review grammar with him and then assist him with the quiz that he had to take after.  The first part of grammar we looked at was capitalization.  I let him review the grammar and then told him if he had any questions to ask me so that I could answer them before we took the quiz.  He told me he didn't have any questions so we started the quiz.  He knew majority of the answers without me having to help him.  The ones that I had to help him with had to deal more with making a word that was already capitalized lower case.  Once we finished the capitalization quiz we started to look over a powerpoint that went over commas, semicolons, and colons. This was a little trickier.  We had to talk about when to use a comma versus a colon when it came to lists, and when to use a semicolon a little more.  Once he told me he was ready we took the quiz.  He struggled at the beginning, but he then started to recognize what he was supposed to do as he took the quiz.  By the end of the quiz I didn't need to help him at all.

     When comparing my first and my second time, I think I did much better at helping the student with his work.  I made sure he understood everything and would guide him when he needed help on the quiz.  I would also explain why he was getting something wrong.  I still need to work on trying to build a relationship with the student.  I think this is going to be my biggest challenge because I will be working with a different student most of the time, if not all of the time, I am there.  Regardless of having the same student or having a different one, I need to work on trying to connect to the student.

Day 1 at Classic City High School: 1/14/15

Today was my first day at Classic City High School.  I was so nervous that I got to the school 30 minutes early.  I just sat in the car and thought about how the next hour and a half would go. When I walked into the building I didn't know where the office was.  I saw a small room right when you walked in, but it seemed so small that I didn't even think of it as the office.  When I determined that the small room was the office I went inside signed in and talked to *Mrs. Melroy where she took me to *Mrs. Smith's class.  On the way to the classroom Mrs. Melroy pointed out all of the different rooms of the school.  I was surprised that the school was made up of six classrooms.  It makes sense because the school has very little students, but it still surprised me.

Mrs. Smith teaches language arts across multiple age levels.  She has multiple tasks that all of the students can do regardless of grade level and she makes adjustments to them so that each student is getting the appropriate amount of work.  The classroom was small but each student had a computer that he/she was able to work on.  I was told to work with *Maggie on her writing assignment.  I did not know what was expected of me so I spent majority of the time just watching Maggie write.  I knew I should of interjected, but I didn't know how and even if Mrs. Smith would want me to. I talked to Mrs. Smith after the class period was over to figure out what she expected from me so that I could improve next week. She told me to interject and make sure that the student stays on track and doesn't lose sight of what the assignment is.  She also told me to stop them if there are any grammar mistakes being made.  Mrs. Smith warned me that the student will push back and that I just have to continue to interject.  She also told me to try to relate and even lie if I have to and tell the student that I made the same mistakes too.

 Although I didn't do the best job on tutoring today, I found out what was expected of me and can plan accordingly for next week.  Next time should go must better!

*names have been changed for privacy purposes