For me, this week started with tracking down students in oder to get them to make up all of their missing work because Friday was the end of the marking period. Not wanting to get calls from parents asking why their daughter/son did not have their work completed, I talked to as many students as I could giving them directions and deadlines for missing work. This worked great. Most of my students did make an effort to complete their work by coming to class after school or during a study hall. For others, no attempt was made to complete any assignment. The most valuable lesson I learned this week was to get and stay organized.
Since there were about twenty five students who needed to make up work, I began talking to as many as I could. Now, I know my organizational skills are okay, but not perfect. So, I had to do everything I could to match all of the missing work with the correct student while providing directions, page numbers, rubrics and expectations of each. Toward the end of the week, I continually reminded them of their missing assignments. As each student handed me their missing work, I graded and posted their grade immediately. It worked flawlessley.
Fortunately, I recognized the need to be organized in advance and I am glad I am not describing this as the part of the week I would like to change.
This week, however, was somewhat boring in both a good and bad way. My co-op left the room most of this week which made me feel trusted in both my content and teaching. Everything seemed to flow nicely. That was good. However, because I still am trying to be overly concious of everything I do and say, I have given myself little room just to be me. That was bad. We have been student teaching for about tweleve weeks and we know the routine to be a good teachers in our schools. The part of the week I would like to change would be to allow my personality to flourish more in the classroom. I sometimes feel like a robot making sure I cover all that I had planned instead of just being me teaching the lesson. As I noticed this toward the end of the week, I did try to add more of my personality to each lesson and it seemed to interest the students a little more.