My Teaching Experiences

I realized this week that I was never introduced to the students in my ninth grade classroom. Which makes me feel disjointed and like I don't actually belong there. The kids in the class are starting to recognize my face at least and are all right with me hanging around. Andrew is working on a movie production activity with the kids to get them thinking about the short story they just read. In the middle of teaching them about pitching a film to the people with money he took a moment to talk about male/female wage differences in America. It was a wild tangent that took about ten minutes out of the constructive class time that he had. He said that it was an important topic to him, but I think it was a highly useless time to bring it up because it wasted time that I think the students could have used doing the actual task at hand.

In eighth grade I led a class discussion Wednesday that seemed to go all right. I feel like I do a lot of watching in that class. Tessa always does the "housekeeping" stuff in the beginning of the period, which always seems to go on for half the period. Plus, I watch at least the first two classes and then teach eighth period.

I'm relatively unimpressed with block II in general. It doesn't feel too different from block I - just more free help for the teachers at the school. I realize this is an institutional problem and that my measly complaint on my blog won't change the rules, but I don't see the value in it yet - except that it takes away from the time I would rather be planning my own classes that I do teach and working at getting ahead on my classes that I take. And starting my master's project, which is something weighing heavily on my mind at this point. I have zero buy-in to block II.

My Teaching Experiences
I'm a graduate student at Boise State University just starting to work with the school districts. This no-frills blog is my account of my experiences in the school setting. Archives: January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007	Sunday, September 24, 2006 I realized this week that I was never introduced to the students in my ninth grade classroom. Which makes me feel disjointed and like I don't actually belong there. The kids in the class are starting to recognize my face at least and are all right with me hanging around. Andrew is working on a movie production activity with the kids to get them thinking about the short story they just read. In the middle of teaching them about pitching a film to the people with money he took a moment to talk about male/female wage differences in America. It was a wild tangent that took about ten minutes out of the constructive class time that he had. He said that it was an important topic to him, but I think it was a highly useless time to bring it up because it wasted time that I think the students could have used doing the actual task at hand. In eighth grade I led a class discussion Wednesday that seemed to go all right. I feel like I do a lot of watching in that class. Tessa always does the "housekeeping" stuff in the beginning of the period, which always seems to go on for half the period. Plus, I watch at least the first two classes and then teach eighth period. I'm relatively unimpressed with block II in general. It doesn't feel too different from block I - just more free help for the teachers at the school. I realize this is an institutional problem and that my measly complaint on my blog won't change the rules, but I don't see the value in it yet - except that it takes away from the time I would rather be planning my own classes that I do teach and working at getting ahead on my classes that I take. And starting my master's project, which is something weighing heavily on my mind at this point. I have zero buy-in to block II.