ELM 590 Week 7 Discussion 1

Your journey through the first seven weeks of student teaching has encompassed many insightful, positive, and, at times, challenging experiences. Share how your most rewarding experiences made you a more effective teacher. In addition, share your most challenging experiences, including how you resolved them, and how they supported your growth as an effective teacher.

My journey through the first seven weeks of student teaching has encompassed many insightful, positive, and, at times, challenging experiences. To begin my student teaching experience, I had to miss the first two days, due to the fact that my cooperating teacher was sick and there was a sub in the classroom. At the start of the following week, there was an entire week of snow days because Michigan was under winter weather advisory for having such low temperatures, otherwise known as a “winter vortex”. Upon the following week, I arrived at the school to hear that my cooperating teacher had an emergency hernia surgery and was still in recovery because she experienced some complications.

During that week, I taught alongside a sub, which had me teach half of the lessons right off the bat. That was actually quite a bit of fun and helped me to improvise and learn the materials they were covering quite rapidly, as well as prepare some reading material/assignments for the students. After the first week of actually being in the classroom, the principal and school board, as well as GCU, decided to move me to a different classroom because they had no idea when my original cooperating teacher would be back.

The following week I was placed with a fourth grade classroom and with a new cooperating teacher. To be honest, I am having a blast with the new classroom. At first, I was worried how it would work because I was told that this specific class/group is “the most difficult class in the school”, and I knew I would miss my previous third grade class. The first day, after having to discipline one boy, who I will refer to ad “buddy”, I had a “breakthrough” occur. My goal for the first week was to build relationships, however, I had to discipline a few students the first day. But through disciplining, specifically “buddy”, I was able to build a tremendous relationship and I had no idea when it happened. At first, I was disappointed that I had to discipline and thought it would ruin my relationships starting right off. Instead, it worked in my ‘benefit’.

“Buddy” and I went ‘head-to-head’, as he told me things like, “you can’t tell me what to do”, and I told him that he was unacceptable, etc. However, shortly after we had our ‘head-to-head’, he went out for recess. After recess, he came over, sat next to me, and said, “I’m sorry for being disrespectful”. Him and I had a little talk, I told him I appreciated him telling me that, and we made a deal that if he was going to “dish it out”, he would have to be able to take it as well. We shook on it and he returned to his seat.

Later that day, he was cutting up bright orange and pink cardstock paper to create things (the only colored cardstock paper in the classroom/school). I went and sat by him and he showed me how to make what he was making. He then made me my own little figure. I asked him what type of paper he would like to use, such as color. He said grey and he loved cardstock because it was sturdy. Later that day, I went to Hobby Lobby and got hi a pack of 100 sheets of various grey tone cardstock paper (for only $3.99) and brought it to him the next day. That also started a positive relationship with “buddy”.

The special situation with this student is that he is Tier 3 behavior, which also means that his only “goal for the day/week/month/year” is not to disrupt the other students during lessons. He is not required to “participate” with classroom activities unless he “wants to”. However, my personal goal was to get this student to participate during lessons. So far, when I teach, he will participate, even if only a small amount. While my cooperating teacher is teaching, I have had “buddy” sit by me to ‘help him’ or I ask him to “help me better understand”, which has also helped. I have found that he is best, during lectures, if he can be creating something from the paper because he is listening and will explain it to me afterwards and it does not disrupt the other students. Therefore, I also give him “challenges” to create, which also minimizes the paper waste and time spent making tiny objects. The most recent thing he created was a 12in. “robot”, which he created a stand for and is now displayed in class, similar to that of a trophy. It gives him something to be proud of, he is listening, he has helped me, and he is actually participating. Apparently, this is a rarity for this student, which makes this feel like a “success” to me.

The challenging experience, which I will briefly describe because I have written too much already, is that I have a ‘gender neutral’ student. This means that I have to refer to this student as “they/them” or just use the student’s name. This has been, by far, the most challenging element to adapt to. It is hard not saying “she” or “her” when referring to the student, such as pairing students together. But I have gotten much better with working with this student and making sure I keep the language gender neutral.