"Are you going to get fired if you do bad?"

I can't believe how quickly time has been flying since student teaching began! October starts this week... what?! It's almost getting to the point where I'm upset how fast it's going because that means the end is coming. Once the end is here.... I guess real life begins? Yikes!

Alright, so this week wasn't exactly my best week ever. It might have actually been the worst one so far. If anything, it was a real reality check on what classroom management means. 

As frustrated as I might get with my students, I need to remember that they are 7 years old and probably just want attention. Which is usually the case. They just want a good laugh from their friends and to avoid the language arts phonics worksheet they need to do!

Sometimes I forget that to them... this is school... to me this is a profession I want to get better at. At times it may be fun and games to them but to me it's a lot of business. 

I've learned that my classroom will never been perfect in terms of management. There will always be students who call answers out, leave the room without asking, take too many pencils, throw books, etc. 

Some quotes from this week... 

"I'm not doing science, I hate science"

"You can't make me read, I'll just stare at my desk pretending to read"

Me: "Didn't I just say to keep your books closed?" Student: "*opens books* So?" 

"I hate this book"  

"I'm bored!"

Me: "You're wasting your own PE time" Student: "You're wasting your teacher planning time"

 

And my favorite one of all week, after telling a student she was being disrespectful... "I don't tell anyone when you're disrespectful to me"

I later learned that me being disrespectful to her was the fact that I don't let them call me by my first name.... okay.... lets just say my CT handled that one in the hallway and I received a nice heart felt apology later. 

They are just kids. Harmless humans! We've all been students and remember how boring school may have seemed at some point. In some ways the experiences I had this week made me want to reconnect with my students in an academic sense and figure out how I can make school more interesting and engaging for them. 

As I begin to plan my original unit for science, I want to figure out what my students want to learn about and tie it all in with my own ideas. I think it'll be fun to see what they are curious about before the unit and watch them uncover the answers to their own questions. Maybe this will help them? I'm not sure but it's worth a try! 

There has been a new face in our classroom lately. My advisor has been coming to school to watch me teach! One of my students asked, ""Are you going to get fired if you do bad?" 

They LOVE to think they have control over me when it comes to my success in teaching lessons. One student even told me they were going to purposely misbehave so I would "get in trouble" with my advisor. Little do they know... he's been a teacher before and knows all the tricks a 7 year old might pull on the innocent student teacher. 

Unfortunately for my students I won't get fired ever. In fact, he loved my lesson! He said my students all seemed happy, engaged, and I was really communicating with them and showing enthusiasm towards the content. 

Miss Brailov- 1     2nd graders- 0

Now as I write this post, it's almost hard to think of all the 'bad' from last week. I'm thinking of all the good things that happened, all the laughs I had with my students, all the hugs I received, all the 'I'm sorrys' I got. Even on my worst day, I left school feeling okay about myself and how the overall day went. 

One of the most rewarding things that happened all of last week was when I heard many students say that they had fun writing a draft of their narrative. They said they wanted to write more because they enjoyed it so much. 

This was so exciting to me because I have been teaching writing! I spent a week and a half teaching them about what a narrative was and all the different parts of writing one and modeling the whole process for them. Recently they have been crafting their own narratives with a partner. On Friday, they drafted their narrative and genuinely had fun. 

That's real learning. When students have fun doing something in school.

After hearing those comments on Friday morning, everything else felt irrelevant. We made it to Friday and my students are having fun writing narratives (Something I've been teaching them to do)! That's a success for me. 

I'm ready to tackle a new week! I'm sure it'll be full of playground drama, trips to the nurse, excuses to not read, broken pencils, chatty students, and so much more! But that's apart of the job and I'm ready for it. On to Monday morning and week 6! 

I'm taking over the whole classroom in 3 weeks... scary.