6 week grades are due in 24 hours, and I'm feeling pretty good. I feel so much more prepared than I did my first year. If it's your first year teaching, it really does get better!! I feel like I've paid my dues. I've survived one year. I deserve to be a teacher, and I deserve to have the respect of my students. I am an expert, and I do have the tools and the motivation to be a great teacher.
This year has truly been a blessing. I have an amazing team of teachers to work with. I'm not just saying that. I meet almost every weekend with 1 or 2 other Geometry teachers and we plan together. We bounce ideas of each other and create better lessons because of it. This weekend 2 of us put in a lot of work creating one component that we needed. Later in the weekend 2 other teachers worked together to create another component that we needed. This year I feel like we're not all doing the same work separately. We're working together to lighten the load while still collaborating to come up with lessons that help kids!
I posted earlier about making lessons fun or doing one fun thing to get kids going. Today we played Simon Says to help us remember which way columns vs. rows go in a matrix. It was fun and only took a minute! After that, I felt like they were ready to learn more intently than if we had just jumped in. Sure they don't need it, but it just helped the attitude.
I presented our goal for the end of the week today when we began talking about matrices. This is something I've never really done before but felt really good about. The kids already know the reason we're learning about matrices. They've already seen a problem like the ones they'll be able to solve at the end of the week. Each day this week as we lead up to that lesson, I'm going to remind them of our ultimate goal which is to use matrices to solve a system of equations. I think it makes the learning meaningful. They can tie it to something they already know how to do. It has more purpose because it's another method so they can check their work or have another strategy if they struggle with the methods we've learned so far. It's so much better that learning disjointed topics every day that don't really tie together at all. This, by the way, is another result of some good collaboration by multiple teachers on the weekend. People undestimate teachers!
Today I sent 2 kids into the hall for the first time this semester. I was giving the kids important information about their assignment and test the following day. Two girls were playing with kleenex and making flowers for their glasses. It was distracting. They were talking while they did it, and other people were watching and listening to them, so I just asked them to wait for me in the hall and I moved on. I went in to the hall a few minutes later, and they both apologized. They recognized that they had been causing a distraction. They knew they had been disrespectful, and they understood why I did what I did. I didn't give them 5 chances and get frustrated when they ignored me since I wasn't giving them consequences. They didn't listen. It kept others from learning, so there was a consequence. If only everything could be so simple : ) I hope I can continue to look at situations in the same way throughout the year and continue to make level headed, fair decisions without letting things go too many times.
This year has truly been a blessing. I have an amazing team of teachers to work with. I'm not just saying that. I meet almost every weekend with 1 or 2 other Geometry teachers and we plan together. We bounce ideas of each other and create better lessons because of it. This weekend 2 of us put in a lot of work creating one component that we needed. Later in the weekend 2 other teachers worked together to create another component that we needed. This year I feel like we're not all doing the same work separately. We're working together to lighten the load while still collaborating to come up with lessons that help kids!
I posted earlier about making lessons fun or doing one fun thing to get kids going. Today we played Simon Says to help us remember which way columns vs. rows go in a matrix. It was fun and only took a minute! After that, I felt like they were ready to learn more intently than if we had just jumped in. Sure they don't need it, but it just helped the attitude.
I presented our goal for the end of the week today when we began talking about matrices. This is something I've never really done before but felt really good about. The kids already know the reason we're learning about matrices. They've already seen a problem like the ones they'll be able to solve at the end of the week. Each day this week as we lead up to that lesson, I'm going to remind them of our ultimate goal which is to use matrices to solve a system of equations. I think it makes the learning meaningful. They can tie it to something they already know how to do. It has more purpose because it's another method so they can check their work or have another strategy if they struggle with the methods we've learned so far. It's so much better that learning disjointed topics every day that don't really tie together at all. This, by the way, is another result of some good collaboration by multiple teachers on the weekend. People undestimate teachers!
Today I sent 2 kids into the hall for the first time this semester. I was giving the kids important information about their assignment and test the following day. Two girls were playing with kleenex and making flowers for their glasses. It was distracting. They were talking while they did it, and other people were watching and listening to them, so I just asked them to wait for me in the hall and I moved on. I went in to the hall a few minutes later, and they both apologized. They recognized that they had been causing a distraction. They knew they had been disrespectful, and they understood why I did what I did. I didn't give them 5 chances and get frustrated when they ignored me since I wasn't giving them consequences. They didn't listen. It kept others from learning, so there was a consequence. If only everything could be so simple : ) I hope I can continue to look at situations in the same way throughout the year and continue to make level headed, fair decisions without letting things go too many times.
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