Welcome to Student Teaching!!!!
Hi Julie and Beth!
Welcome to student teaching and we hope, the time of your life!!!!
This is the blog we've told you about, and we will expect you to check in here weekly, let us know how things are going, and watch for specific prompts from us.
Plan on journaling a "week in review" for us each week. I'll get a prompt up here towards the end of the week, and we expect a response from you by Tuesday of the following week.
We know that you arrived safely, and hope that you have had a chance to get settled into the base and into your classrooms. We have conversed with your teachers about Co-teaching a bit, and hope that there are some strategies there that prove useful as you get further into your experiences.
So for this week, in your week in review, please tell us how the transition is going: jet lag, adjustment to the time change, life on base, how your school and classrooms are set up, and your initial thoughts about your mentors and learners. We hope the first 2 weeks have been great for all of you!
Enjoy your long weekend, and we will look for updates from you early next week!
Chris and Heidi
posted by Heidi @ 3:01 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
The first couple of weeks were hard, but I feel like I am finally getting adjusted. The first night I was here, I went to bed around 8, and woke at 3 thinking it was the morning. It took a few days before my sleep schedule got on track. However, the jet lag took longer to get used to. Before this trip I thought that jet lag was just being tired from the time difference, but it was so much more. My brain was not functioning at full capacity for at least a week. The other main challenge to the time difference is talking with friends and family at home. Most of our overlapping waking hours are spent when I'm at school, or my loved ones are at work. I have been able to skype in the mornings before school, but I didn't think about what a challenge the time change would present ahead of time.
Life on base was a little confusing to begin with, but I'm doing a lot better now. The biggest thing that I had trouble with was all of the acronyms people use. Everyone assumes I what they mean, but it is almost like a foreign language unto itself. I have picked up most of the essential details though, and only have a hiccup occasionally.
The schedule at my school is very different from what I have ever seen before. There are four periods a day. Students go to periods 1-4 one day, and 5-8 the next day. But 8th period is called seminar. The first 25 minutes are for silent reading, then the remainder of the time is broken into two sections. Students can go to which ever classroom they need to so they can get help, make up a test, study for an exam, etc. During the day, the students get signatures on a "green card" to keep track of where are the students are going.
I'm not sure how I feel about the current class schedule. It is nice to have so much time to work with my students, and since my teacher only has 4 classes, I have one or two prep periods every day. However, the students don't seem to take the seminar time seriously. They also seem to lose attention in class toward the end of the period.
I'm very excited to work with my mentor. There is no doubt that she cares enormously for her students. She is very reflective on her teaching practices, which will be a great model for me to follow during this experience. When we were grading a test the other day, a large number of students got the same answer wrong. Instead of assuming it was the students' fault, she decided that she needed to present the information in an alternative way in the future.
Currently, I am gradually taking on more and more responsibilities in the class. I have not had a lot of chance to work with all of my students yet, but I have worked with some of them. From what I can tell, they are great. One thing I love about this school is that there is so much diversity in the classroom. The two classes that I have are algebra 2 and discrete math. The students in algebra 2 seem very self motivated. They are eager to learn, which makes class run very smoothly. The atmosphere in discrete math is very different. The counselors at the school have encouraged students that struggled with math previously to take this course. Most of the students think they are "dumb at math" and they "hate math". The most shocking thing is that they will ask me questions, but already know the answer. They just don't have the confidence to trust their own skills.
Arriving in Germany has been very surreal. All of the excitement and anticipation makes it seem like a dream. I have had an outstanding first two weeks and for the most part this is because of the people involved in the school community. Mark Twain Elementary School is like a big family and everyone has open up their doors to allow me to join. The principal, Dolly, has been extremely nice and understanding. The first day I arrived she drove me all over town to get me my proper IDs. She took me to the Commissary where I was able to get some food, and she gave us dishes for our apartment. Dolly allowed me to sleep in until 11 o’clock the second day I was here so I could rest and adjust to the time.
Jet lag lasted for about five days. Beth and I didn’t go anywhere the first weekend, which helped to organize our lives and to get over being jet lagged. Jet lag just made me feel like I was in a fog and made my brain feel like it didn’t work right. I forgot my lunch two out of the three days I went to school the first week. The first couple days were the worst, but now that the jet lag is gone, I feel much better and right at home!
Life on the base is different than what I was expecting. Everyone is really nice and willing to help. For example, one night when Beth and I were walking home from the Commissary with bags of groceries, a nice man pulled over and offered to give us a ride. We accepted and jumped in. It turned out that he was the Air Force Liaison to the General. In the past two weeks that I have been here, everyone has been very helpful and kind to us. Another great thing about living on the base is how inexpensive everything is. It makes it so nice after exploring off base, where everything is much more expensive, to come back and be able to buy food and other essentials for regular, or even less than regular price.
I was very surprised at all of the technology that my school has. Majority of the classrooms, including the library, all have SmartBoards. Luckily for me, my mentor teacher, Carlen, is one of the more experienced technology people in my school. People are always coming to her for SmartBoard advice. I had never seen a SmartBoard in action in a classroom until I came here and it is so amazing how much the students enjoy using it. It is interactive and fun, and the students seem to learn a lot while using it. I am looking forward to planning lessons using the SmartBoard! Carlen is a fabulous teacher and I will learn a lot from her. She is very experienced and extremely organized which is something I can improve on. The students love her while at the same time respect her. Her classroom management is very effective and stern, but with equal amounts of warmth and support.
The students in the classroom are a very diverse group. There are several different ethnicities including Italian and Korean. There are also more twins in this class than I have ever encountered. There is a set of triplets and a set of twins, along with two other students that are twins, but their twins are in another classroom. None of the students in my class are on an IEP, which is very surprising. Carlen has expressed that she has worked hard on getting a couple students on an IEP, but she hasn’t had any luck. Only one of the students has a parent deployed to Iraq. The family of the student told him that his mother was deployed to Georgia, USA. This has been very hard for Carlen because she doesn’t agree with this. The family expects Carlen to not mention the fact that the mother is in Iraq. Carlen told me that when the mother was first deployed the student’s behavior deteriorated, but as time has gone on he has gotten better.
Other than this, the class seems very normal. I would say that they are very fortunate and have many privileges and benefits that other schools don’ t have, such as an abundance of technologies. I have been having a great experience and I look forward to teaching and planning using all of the resources available to me at this school.
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