Life After the edTPA
Hi and Congrats on completing the edTPA!
Share what your classroom plans are now that the edTPA is off your plate. What is a goal you would like to reach in the next month? What are you doing or did for Veteran's weekend?
posted by Chris @ 12:22 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Now that I've finally finished the edTPA and helping out with the fall play, I can get back to a lot of things namely free time! :) In school, I am hoping to contribute more to both of my master teachers' AP courses by teaching lessons. It is difficult to insert myself in these two courses because both teachers are teaching two of their favorite texts - Macbeth and The Scarlet Letter. I've noticed that when a teacher is teaching a text that they truly adore, they are less likely to give over any sort of control to anyone else for fear that the other person may misguide the class or leave out important information. This is fine with me but it is getting a little boring just observing my teachers especially since I don't plan on teaching either of these texts in future classes.
My one exciting thing in the classroom until I begin observations in other classes is Animal Farm. My Honors 10 students are just beginning the text and I think that they like it so far. Unfortunately we only have one full week in the month of November so planning was difficult and there are a lot of activities that I had to ignore in order to teach the book before my last week of student teaching. Fortunately I am using a unit guide that I had created for T&L 464 and ENG 323 so there are only a few things that I have to tweak here and there in order to make the text applicable to this course and to the DoDEA standards. I'm really excited to see what the students will take away from one of my favorite novels. :)
This long weekend I spent a lot of time with my parents since Julie went to Tokyo for the weekend. It was really nice and I got a lot of personal stuff accomplished and got to see friends that I haven't seen/hung out with since I started getting really involved with the edTPA. I even read a good chunk of a book that I've been working on for a few weeks now - "The Forest of Hands and Teeth". Now I'm just looking forward to finishing up my unit, Thanksgiving, and my birthday then before we all know it, student teaching will be over! Crazy! :)
Finishing the TPA was great and being able to have Chris visit right after was an awesome treat as well, always good to see a familiar face (and my slew of Daily Evergreens!) In the classroom, I am taking over more in the other grades and we will be starting Night in the 10th grade classroom. The students did a preview activity over the long weekend so we will see how much they retained, today might be a bit more previewing than originally planned but I think it will be good for them in order to get a deeper understanding of the text. I'm excited to be able to make connections between the events that happen throughout the Holocaust in the book to our location here in Germany and things students can truly understand because many have visited concentration camps, etc. They will be doing a research project on randomly assigned concentration camps too. In my 7th grade class we are almost done with Walk Two Moons and I think they have really enjoyed it. They love when we get to read out loud as a class because I've really been trying to stress to them that "assigned reading" CAN be fun...and they love how enthusiastic I am when I read and mimic my tone and inflection, which is awesome. We've got a few thespians on our hands! It has been nice to have more free time, although it seems my free time is dwindling down now that cheer is starting up again. I'm excited because we are combining with the Bamberg base so we have about 10 or so cheerleaders total (including some boys!) and we all meet on tuesdays and thursdays and practice individually on the other days. It will be a challenge figuring out how I will manage coaching and school planning but I am up for it! Wish me luck!
This weekend I'm going to Colonge with some friends and we are going to a concert and exploring the city a bit! It should be a good time.
Alaina--sounds like you are having a really great experience! I love being able to catch up with old friends, I'm glad that worked out for you! Good luck with Animal Farm!
Thanks to both of you for bring us up to date on life after the edTPA. I'm anxious to hear more about Animal Farm--good planning to use your unit guide from your methods courses. Kelsey--please tell us more about how Night is going and their research projects. That is a meaningful assignment when they may visit a concentration camp while they are in Germany.
Hope your weekend was good. We will do a post before Thanksgiving.
Sigh, the TPA. Now that the TPA is done I am actually more stressed. After hearing from my peers who are receiving their scores, I am just anxiously awaiting my fate. It has been difficult to student teach as of late. Handing back topics and roles in the classroom is devastating. It is harder than I imagined to connect and teach and have to hand back those amazing experiences. Currently I am only teaching English,however, I am looking forward to observing other elementary classrooms in the last couple weeks.
I am starting to realize how much i deeply care about my students. I cannot believe we've already been here 13 weeks and its almost done. I cannot imagine how hard it will be to say good bye to each of them.
For veterans weekend my mother and sister flew in to visit. I met them in Tokyo and showed them where i worked in the embassy. I was amazing to be able to share that experience with my family. Then we all flew down to Okinawa. I was fortunate enough to be able to have them watch me teach during the week. The kids went absolutely crazy about meeting my mom and finding out I had a sister. It was hilarious and heartwarming.
Tomorrow we have the thanksgiving feast with the Japanese school. There will be 50 children in the classroom, 23 being my students and a whole mess of food. I am mentally preparing for the absolute chaos that is about to occur. Wish me luck!!
That is so fun that your family got to come and see you Julie! I bet that was a fun! I agree, getting our scores was stressful and I think Alaina clarified for me how those work? (Chris I emailed you about that as well...)
Night has been going well with the 10th graders, I had them write reflections based on the assigned reading segment and was nervous about the responses I would get, but they were really insightful and worked really well as a jumping-off point for our discussion!
They are working on a research assignment about different concentration camps and were in the library earlier this week to look things up, and everyone got really into it. It was exciting to see them excited! WWII is one of my favorite history subjects (although I've had to consult with the history teacher about a couple things to make sure I'm not giving them incorrect background information!) :)
7th graders are working on their final essay for Walk Two Moons and had a writing lab/peer edit workshop today. I used the AFOSP strategy from the WSU Writing Center and it seemed to work really well! I was nervous they wouldn't comprehend how breaking it down into those components would help them rather than hinder them, but with some additional reviewing (after having introduced it the other day) they took off with it.
I am nervous because apparently the 7th graders have 3 other projects/essays due in some of their other core classes and a few students approached me with concerns, but after talking to the other teachers it seems that the students have been given ample time to begin the other assignments and the projects are due on different dates.
Even though I still believe they will be fine, it makes me nervous about balancing the line of a good amount of pressure to full on stress...hopefully they handle it with the former in mind.
Best of luck to everyone as we continue into the last leg here, and a Happy Thanksgiving to all next week! :)
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