My Teaching Experiences

I'm beginning to think that eighth grade isn't for me. Maybe it is, and I would just have to have more ownership over the class (last year I really enjoyed working with the seventh graders), but as of right now...I don't know.

It is difficult being in someone else's class - and being all the time reminded that I am in someone else's class. It's a great way to finish off my student teaching because I'm not developing lesson plans and I'm not grading anything, but it is difficult stepping into someone else's daily plan and enacting things as dictated. Sometimes I wonder how I'm going to plow through.

I have one student in particular, L----, who causes problems all the time in class. He talks out, asks off-topic questions, disrupts the students who sit around him, and finds any excuse he can to leave his desk. The thing is, I really think that most of the time he means well. I also think that a traditional educational setting is exactly what this boy doesn't need. I think he needs more interaction, more hands-on activities, more conversing, and more problem solving. For the large part of my day, I feel like I'm spoon feeding them lessons. This kid, I think, would really benefit from a less direct approach, from a more laissez-faire approach where the teacher is much, much more of a guide just to make sure he doesn't hit his thumb with the hammer. I just don't know how to give that to him.