Week 6 Reflection

I was relieved and excited to be back to teaching this week! With sickness behind me and a week of adventures ahead, I was back in the classroom for the entire week. It was fun and surprising to see how excited the students were that I had returned, and I was able to quickly get back into the routine of school and finished introducing the unit's material to the students.

The week’s lessons went well, with no major mishaps or exciting news. I’ve begun to prepare my lessons more thoroughly by typing homework answers, definitions, and directions to example problems for note taking during lessons. Due to my messy hand writing, I thought this approach may help students and also allow me to be more organized and focused on the content. So far I find the pre-typed notes to be a great help and am working towards perfecting my pace and presentation of the notes with this method.

On Thursday, I was able to be observed by my coordinator, Mrs. Muniz, which is always a helpful experience. She was able to observe my instruction in a Geometry class and give me useful and constructive feedback. Her suggestions will be a help to me in my future lessons and hopefully something I can improve on within the upcoming weeks.

Thursday and Friday allowed for time with faculty members to discuss information in our Professional Learning Communities (PLC). I always enjoy being a “real” member of the faculty and joining with other teachers in the school as a way to be better informed and united. We were able to discuss PLC issues, Quantiles, and discuss power standards and pacing guides for different subjects.

My fellow PDS interns and I prepared a site-based seminar on Friday afternoon for the participants and tutors to attend. We discussed classroom management as a group and then broke the tutors into one group to discuss Digital Stories while the Participants discussed the Wikki assignment. I was able to talk to the participants about their Wikki, as well as field general questions about life as an Intern. I really enjoy getting together with other education students and felt that the seminar went very well. We had a few technical difficulty problems that were luckily able to be resolved with “back up” plans and help from Mrs. Muniz, which also helped the seminar to run more smoothly.

We had a great turn out and I think the Participants and Tutors really appreciated our efforts in presenting information to them. They had great questions for me and even stayed a little longer (on a Friday!) to discuss questions and concerns they had. I was pleased we had the opportunity to get everyone together at the seminar.

The upcoming week will be excited but busy! With homecoming festivities taking place this week, I will have the opportunity to be involved in a lot of activities this week. I'm excited about getting more acquainted with students and faculty through participating in the school's Homecoming celebrations!