#5 Bringing It All Together!

As this semester comes to a wrap and after reviewing my course goals that I had at the beginning of the semester, I realized I have made progress on them, but still have areas of improvement. I definitely developed a closer relationship with my CT and colleagues! I loved the wonderful team collaboration Le Roy brought between the 3^rd grade teachers and my other classmates in the other 3^rd grade classrooms. Everyone was so helpful, and I also think that my CT was more welcoming, helpful, and relatable than my CT from last semester. She is a great role model for first years of teaching and is definitely someone I want to keep in touch with! This is her second year teaching after she graduated from ISU, and she demonstrates good practices we have learned at ISU. Having her as my CT also helped me in making progress on my other goals such as, classroom management. She modeled effective classroom management strategies, which helped with the structure and behavior of the students. This also helped me in seeing how her strategies work, and how I can implement them. She has given me great suggestions, and I would take her suggestions for improvement. I would go over the morning math work every morning with the students, and my CT would always take notes to provide me with feedback on my teaching and suggestions for improvement. She did the same when I implemented my lessons. I learned a lot about different strategies such as, using charts on the wall for writing workshop and read to self (during guided reading), which tells what the students should be doing and what the teacher should be doing. My CT explained how she didn’t do guiding reading in the first week or two, until the students were familiar with what they should be doing. She used a timer and timed their “stamina” for how long they can last without misbehaving or talking out loud. They built it up to an hour until my CT felt they could begin guided reading groups. This is something I would like to implement for future teaching to help with classroom management. Some other ways I specifically improved was addressing issues as they arose in an appropriate manner, giving guidelines and rules in my lessons, giving expectations, and building a relationship with all the students. I think building relationships is really important and gaining the students’ trust. My CT always reinforces the students to make good choices, and she would say, “Show me 3,” which means being respectful, responsible, and safe (the school wide PBIS system). Her classroom management strategies also help in not having to use the clip system as much because students learn how to behave themselves. This is something we repeatedly talk about in class, and I think will definitely help me when I am student teaching.

I also made progress on learning more about how to accommodate for students with special needs. Specifically, the student in the 3^rd grade classroom with special needs was Abe. He has Fragile X syndrome. I never knew exactly what this was. Fragile X syndrome is a genetic dysfunction of the X chromosome, especially among boys, and related to autism. It causes intellectual disability as well as differences in physical and behavioral characteristics such as, elongated face, protruding ears, stereotypical movements (hand-flapping), and social anxiety. Abe has these characteristics as well as being non-verbal. To greet him, you just lay your hand out in front of him and he touches it. He has a teacher aide all day and is included in the classroom. He functions at a very routine-based level. For accommodations, he uses visual charts, schedules, manipulatives, communication devices, computer games/videos, etc. My CT also uses a microphone in the classroom so Abe can hear better, and also so all the students can hear better because Abe can make noises with his mouth. With my observations and discussions with my CT and the teacher aide, I gained a lot more insight on Abe and his disability. I was also fortunate to gain more insight by being able to sit in on a team meeting with Abe’s parents, my CT, teacher aide, special education teacher, occupational therapist, speech pathologist, and paraprofessional.  This was a great learning experience and was wonderful to see how well Abe was progressing this school year (struggling since pre-school). I saw how well everyone collaborated together in providing their information and opinions, and developing outcome goals and objectives for Abe. One of the objectives was for Abe to recognize the faces and names of his peers in the classroom. This would help with his social and adaptive skills. This experience also related to what I have been learning in SED 374, and it was great to see such good practices and models being implemented. This experience will definitely be helpful in the future as I may come across students with the same or similar disability. 

One thing I still struggled a little with was my teacher voice/confidence level, but I think I made some improvements. I would practice speaking at home as I would to the kids, and this helped. I tried being more enthusiastic and having a good tone of voice, which sometimes I think I did better than others. I’m learning that teacher voice and confidence level go hand in hand. I think as I continue growing more comfortable in what I am teaching, I will be more confident and therefore have an improved teacher voice (which includes really knowing the students, content, what to say, etc.). This is something my CT also wanted me to work on, and I will continue to improve on this, especially as I move forward to student teaching. This helps me to know how critical this aspect is in student learning and engagement, and also how it will help me to become a better teacher.

I’m also continuing on improving my time management skills. I progressed as I was making schedules for myself, and planning out what days and time of the day I have to get certain things done. In my clinical lessons, I did well with my time management in my science lesson. I planned out the timing for each part of the lesson, including giving the students time frames for moving to different stations. In the implementation of the lesson, I made sure to watch the clock and keep the lesson moving with a good flow. On the other hand, I didn’t do so well on time management with my literacy lesson. I had planned time frames for parts of the lesson, but it fell through in my implementation. I got caught up in the moment, and also mixed up my timing by thinking my lesson ended at 9:20 instead of 9:10. I definitely need to keep this as one of my goals for the future to continue improving on. This plays a huge part, not only in teaching and learning, but also in everyday life!

Overall, I really enjoyed my experience at Le Roy with my CT, colleagues, and especially the 3^rd grade students! I learned a lot more that will help me as I move forward to student teaching and becoming a teacher! Even still, I am going to continue working on these goals I made for myself to keep improving. I’m so thankful to have such a great experience at Le Roy, and I’m glad I got this chance. I’m going to miss the students, and will be keeping the cute drawings and notes they would give to me. It will be bittersweet this last week of clinical, but I’m excited to finally implement my social studies lesson!