Well, it’s the first
week of school and everybody is getting back into the swing of things. The
students are learning the routines that allow their teachers to maintain order
and manage class time with ease. The first lessons plans will break the ice and
help teachers remember individual names, a task that is aided by seating charts
and computer programs that display the students’ school photos.
In many classrooms you
will find a college student beginning the first semester of his or her final
year in the college of education. These students are future teachers learning
their craft through observation and hands on experience. I am one
such college student, my name is Jake, but my students call me Mr. Thimesch. Through
this blog I will share observations and personal thoughts on my pre-student
teaching semester.
I have the good fortune
to work with the cooperating teacher whose class I observed in last semester.
It is helpful that I already know her routines and we have a good rapport.
While I know my cooperating teacher, all of the students are completely new to
me and I have a feeling that it will take me a few class periods before I
remember all of their names. There are only twenty-one students, so the task is
not too daunting. The first day I was in the room the students presented
personal timelines which helped me associate information about the students
with their faces and names. I still think that the most helpful thing for me to
learn names as a student-teacher is handing back home work. I also look at the
names on the top of the students’ folders. While I am not a fan of assigned
seating, I will most definitely use a seating chart the first few weeks in my
own classroom.
I am glad to see that so many teachers are starting out with "getting-to-know-you" projects. My cooperating teacher used this paragraph/puppet exercise that asked students to talk a little bit about themselves and use visual stimuli/creativity, but also required them to create a reasonably fleshed-out paragraph. It was a good way to get to know the students, even though I did not get to watch all of them present their own work.
ReplyDeleteI know that as a student I was not a fan of assigned seating, but I am definitely seeing the point of it more and more as an observer/active member of the classroom. It is a good way to get students who would potentially never interact with each other to actually build something of a relationship, even if it is as simple of one as a "conscientious neighbor." While of course this is not always the case, I enjoy (purely from a psychological standpoint of course) seeing how students with different temperaments and from different "cliques" end up interacting with each other. I think it is definitely the best way (once you get a feel for your students) to avoid potential challenges and issues between students. Prevention is definitely better than cleaning duty.