Weeks 3 & 4

Starting with week three, I started taking over my mentor teacher's 3rd and 4th period 7th grade classes. I was pretty excited because I would start feeling more like a real teacher and started using my own lessons. The transition was a pretty easy one since they have all been around me for a few weeks and were comfortable with me taking over. The students started off being a little more noisey since I was a student teacher and they wanted to test me, so I did have to raise my voice a little to let them know that I am in charge. The 3rd week went by very well and I was happy with what happened. During my fourth week I got into my own rythmn of doing things and felt very comfortable in class. I sped through some sections that flowed smoothly together so that I would be able to implement my action research test. The test had only 20 questions with 5 on basics, 8 on decimals and 7 on fractions. They had the entire period to work on it without a calculator so I could get my baseline data for my research. I was very surprised that the scores were so low with the main focus on fractions. My students acted like they have never seen or used fractions before in their lives. Even though my students performed poorly on this research test, it did provide me with a good baseline data so I know where to focus my attention with my students. The test also proved me right because it shows that my students have become very dependent on calculators for everything, including their basic skills that they should be mastering at this level. Overall it has been a pretty good semester and I am looking forward to this upcoming week because I will be taking over 4 out of the 6 classes and I am also going to the LSU game, so I am pretty psyched for that too.

Weeks 1 & 2

My first two weeks have been great. My mentor teacher made me feel from day one that I was a part of the class already by making sure I was introduced in all of his classes. I felt this allowed for me to start out as an authority figure right away. Besides just making sure the students knew who I was, my mentor teacher makes me feel comfortable in his class because he is laid back like me and I don't feel any pressure from him. Throughout the past two weeks I feel I am becoming more familiar with all my students and they feel just as comfortable with me as their teacher as they would if my mentor teacher was teaching. We have had very little problems in the classroom currently with the exception of one or two students, so we have been able to get a lot of work done because the students are not being distracted.
After the first day I started helping out more by grading quizzes and checking homework everyday I'm there. I feel this has helped me a lot because I have full control over how many points the students get on their quizzes, and it is helping me understand how to grade better. Also I am becoming more keen about how students try and make it look like they did their homework and if they just copied answers from another student. During our planning period I have been making lessons for the future so I will be ahead of schedule when I start taking over his classes, which will be starting this week. Starting Tuesday I plan to take over two of his six classes and I am already prepared for the class until October with some open days to conduct my action research. Overall it has been a great two weeks and I believe it will continue throughout the semester.