This week I started my observations with Ms. Johnson's 4th grade class. I'll be with them once a week and I'll teach them at least 8 lessons. I'm so excited. The school that I'm in has fourth graders go to two different classes. Ms. Johnson teaches math and science, and Ms. Rodriquez teaches the reading and social studies. So essentially I have to classes, the 4-1s and the 4-2s, but I will only spend about 20 minutes with the 2's each week. I think that this set up is my dream job. I would absolutely love only teaching math and science to 4th or 5th graders.
The students in my class are wonderful...of course, I've only been with them once. My opinion could change after they get to know me and start acting more like themselves. We'll see in a couple of weeks. When I first got there Miss Johnson let them all ask me questions. It was crazy to see how different they all were just in the questions they asked. I got questions from "What's your favorite color?" to, "Have you ever kissed a boy?" It was fun though and through this I learned most of the 4-1's names. I'll probably never leave the 2's. Oh well.
Something happened while I was there that essentially made me more determine to be a teacher. It showed me what it is I like about being in a classroom. My students are learning multiplication right now, and so they were doing a facts sheet. Facts sheets have 100 multiplication problems on them and the students are timed to see how well they can do. They just recently started doing these like last week and they all keep a progress chart so they can visually see how much they've improved since the last test. After grading their papers, Ms. Johnson asked who had improved. One boy, Avery, improved drastically since the last time they had done it. He raised his hand and had a huge smile on his face. Ms. Johnson walked over to look at his paper and her jaw just dropped. She went through and graded it really fast and found that yes, he really had only missed 19 of them. She immediately hugged him and both were just there smiling for a while. Later, Ms. Johnson told me that on tuesday, two days before, when he had last done it, he had missed 82. She said that was the biggest improvement over two days she had ever seen. She then asked Avery what he had been doing and he said he'd just been studying a lot at home and doing flashcards and stuff.
The point is, I really enjoyed that moment when I saw Avery's face light up because he had done so good. I could actually see how proud of himself he was and how proud Ms. Johnson was of him. I just would like to be a part of those student/teacher moments that are so profound.
Okay. I think that's all.
-Kristina
