First week in the books!

Well I did it. I have successfully completed my first, first week of school having my own classroom. I have to admit, I didn’t know what to expect the first day, and was pleasantly surprised. We are on a hybrid schedule so actually I had 2 “first days” so to speak because of the split. Although this week was very much “talk heavy” from me, it gave me some very valuable lessons in pacing and variety.

I have to say, it was so nice being able to act and present myself exactly how I want to be as a teacher. When you are student teaching, naturally you are beholden to your co-op’s classroom. As a building sub, I straight away decided I wanted to be the sub that got the work done. Because of this, I had to put on a no-nonsense persona when things needed to be accomplished. Even when I took over the Personal Finance class, the students knew me as a student teacher turned building sub. I wasn’t a “real teacher” to them. Now it’s:new school, new environment, new classroom, real teacher me.

So here’s what I did. The first day I introduced myself, asking kids questions about their lives as it related to stuff I was sharing. I tried to express how excited I was to be teaching the course and how I am here for them (ala C.J. Reynolds). After that, I did a “Would you rather?” question panel, but I made students explain why they chose what they did. Some classes went better than others. I do like asking a lot of questions to my students. In many cases they aren’t used to this. However I’m hoping over time, they will use my question asking to enhance their writing skills. So, this was my plunge into letting them know, this is how I roll.

I know I probably talked too much that first day, but the students didn’t have their devices yet. In a class where I am not planning on passing out handouts and mostly everything is digital, I was kind of in a jam. 65 minutes is a helluva long time to fill up for me just talking. Whatever, I got through it and I thought it went ok and pretty well in some classes.

For the second day, I started off by having them brainstorm some of the best procedures all of their teachers ever have used that have helped them learn. I took down notes from their suggestions, and let them know that I will try to implement as many of these as I could. Next, I presented them with four essential questions for classroom norms. We made a class list, and I will compile them into one big ELA word cloud then draw it on my chalkboard.

Afterward, we did a quick syllabus run down and some other expectations that haven’t arisen yet. A few tech hits and a reader's choice survey and day over.

I’m really going out on a limb here and trying as best as possible to have an open, inviting classroom, while really being a newbie teacher. I’m idealistic in life and I just want to give this a shot. Mind you, I do remind them to not mistake my kindness for weakness because I can shut it down real fast. We’ll see how it goes.

The hybrid schedule offers its own unique set of challenges. Students are used to the “not real learning” of the Spring. It’ll be interesting to see how they follow through with required online work. I have only had max 15 kids at a time in a class and those norms were created in cohorts. Once hybrid subsides, it's going to be a whole new world again. However, that is something for another day. As I write this, I have 2 more blocks to go on a Friday. These two blocks are more challenging than my others so I’m hoping this still proves true by the final bell today. I think it will be just fine.

/slight time travel

As expected my final two blocks did turn out to be just fine. Because of the hybrid schedule the M-Z bunch seems to be a lot more even in personalities over the group where the A-L cohort has quite a few characters.

All in all, I am pretty pleased that I was able to have 4 (really 2x2) successful starting days. I can't tell if I'll be a decently liked teacher or an annoying one in their eyes, but I will try my best to help them learn. I do prescribe to the thought that people do not learn from those they do not like or in environments they are not comfortable. It is truly a challenge to try to set up a solid learning environment for all (most, let's be real here) students, especially with Covid-19 regulations. I really laid my empathetic and mentor-like cards down here. While I'm confident it won't backfire per se, I do really hope that it actually WORKS.

Onward to diagnostic and benchmarking week!