Online Reflection #2: First Day!

Today, I finally went to my placement! However, even after the orientation I had a couple of weeks ago, I got lost on the way to my classroom. Well, partially anyway. I just turned too soon, but still, it was embarrassing having to ask another teacher where my cooperating teacher's classroom was located.

Once I finally got to the classroom, I came in and said hello to the teacher, Mrs. Ellis. She introduced me to her para-educator, Mrs. Paxton, who helps some of the students in the class which are in the special education program. Later, I found out nearly half of the class is made up of special education students, which was somewhat surprising to me because they all seemed to be working fairly well!

Well, most of them anyway. I'll get back to that later. First, let me explain to you what the class is currently working on. Seeing how this is a class of seniors, many of the students are beginning to search for jobs, but have no experience making resumes, writing formal letters, etc. So, to help them out, Mrs. Ellis is having them create a resume as well as write a cover and follow-up letter. Once they finished these activities, they moved on to marking up a poorly written e-mail and re-typing it to make the e-mail more clear, concise, and conventionally correct.

Now, back to those off-task students. One in particular was supposed to be working on one of the two letters, I can't recall which, but instead was constantly playing one of the games from the Legend of Zelda series. I kept telling him that Link would still be there when he finished his work, but he would not listen. Another student believed she "didn't need to do any of this because she was going to start her own business." And yet another couple of young men in the class were playing games like Duck Hunt when they should have been finishing their résumés. Thankfully, the latter two I mentioned got back on task when Mrs. Ellis asked them kindly to work. Also, I noticed just before the class period ended that even the girl that "didn't need to do any of this" had started to work. I'm really not sure if Mrs. Ellis spoke with her and I just missed it, or if she realized hey, maybe I will need this knowledge at some point in my life. Either way, I'm glad she decided to start working on her assignments. So, fellow pre-student teachers, how would you have handled these students, specifically the one that wouldn't stop playing his video game no matter how many times I asked? There were a couple of times where I nearly hit Alt + F4 on his keyboard, but I was afraid that was a bit too bold of a move on my first day in the classroom, especially considering I'm not actually their teacher.

When Mrs. Ellis had a moment during the class period, I mentioned my unit I had to teach in her class this semester. She asked me if I had ever heard of the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey. I chuckled because just yesterday I read this blog post on Ms. Black's Point of View, which mentioned this book. Until I read said blog post, I had never even heard of this book. Now I've heard it two days in a row and Mrs. Ellis even had Mrs. Paxton check out a copy for me to use, so I have a copy in my possession.

Overall, my first day with the class went very well. The organization system Mrs. Ellis had for the assignments being worked on today was easy to navigate, so I could easily give students the sheet(s) explaining the next task they needed to do. Also, the students accepted my help if both Mrs. Ellis and Mrs. Paxton were busy at the time they needed it. I'm not sure I've ever been accepted so quickly in a classroom! One of the students even complained when I was using the technique of proximity to make sure they were staying on task by saying, "Man, now there are three teachers in here!"