Blog #9

"Reflect on any after-school activity you attended."

Friday night was the annual "Mohawk Bowl" which is the football game between the Morgantown High School Mohigan's and the University High School Hawks.  Traditionally, the players from both schools shave their heads into mohawks as this is the "biggest rivalry in the state for high school football."  Although I disagree with this, because I know school's who have much bigger rivalries in West Virginia, it is still a very serious and important game.  My students asked me all week to attend, those who played football, played in the band, were on the majorette line, and others who were just going to be in attendance, as well.  Although I have already gone to two football games and a girls soccer game, this was one game I did not want to miss.  I wore my blue shirt and my best friend and the three other interns all wore either their blue or red, and we sat front row on the 40 yard line to cheer on our team.  Students from each of our classes came up and talked with us throughout the entire game and were so happy that we came to support.  Even several of the players waved, which is against the rules.  Other's who did not wave let me know in class that they saw me and were happy that I came.  They were happier, in fact, because MHS won the game!!!  The stands were packed, the weather was great, and everyone was there to support their teams.  I really feel like there is nothing like high school football.  Morgantown High's best player, Chazzy, got taken out and hurt pretty early in the game and had to be rushed out in an ambulance to have immediate surgery on his ankle.  Even though we were winning, I really thought Morgantown High would lose momentum because they lost one of their best players but luckily, they kept up the tempo and finished strong.  As I was leaving the game, I ran into one of Morgantown High's vice principal and talked for a little bit and then ran into the Principal, and smiled and said hello.  He isn't much of a talker but I was glad I could at least get him to say hello!  I am so glad I got to attend this game, it was really a great experience and this coming Friday is the last home game of the season according to some of the students so if the weather is good, I think I'm going to try to attend it as well! :-)

Blog #8

"Reflect on your professional relationships with school personnel other than your mentor teacher."

There are several teachers who I have formed a great working relationship with and one that I have become friends with as the year has progressed.  I am pretty excited about all of them.  Several teachers who I work with during our PLC's, which also include forming a better relationship with two of my previous mentor teachers at Morgantown High School, two of the special educations co-teachers who I work with, and finally the history teacher whose room is next door to mine.  I was already working well with the two mentor teachers who I worked with previously so I won't discuss those.  The two teachers I work with during our PLC are really fun to work with and we have all worked really well together.  Although, Susie and I (another intern) always get suckered into doing all of the work until this last PLC where we all worked together.  They are both really nice and very helpful and we have worked well together regarding out 10th grade classes.  There is only one 11th grade teacher who I've talk to about work but I have been friends with her for several years.  The history teacher has been awesome to befriend because we have discovered that we have many of the same students so we have been able to work together to get them to work better in both classes.  He also just comes in to talk sometimes throughout the day and we usually just discuss our days after school, too, which is nice to just get all of that out of my head and tell someone else, which I'm sure is similar for him, as well.  He has been teaching for 4 years now in history and we share a lot of history ideas which should be helpful in the future for both of us!  

The relationships I am happiest about building are those with the co-teachers.  There is one "autism aid" who works with me during 3rd period and she is a lifesaver in more ways than one.  She is one of the nicest co-teachers I have worked with and she is so helpful with giving me prior information on students regarding IEP's.  We have two students with autism in my 4th period class and without her as an aid, one of them would cause major disruptions in the class but thankfully, she sits with this student and stops the problem before it becomes a major issue.  She is working on an actual degree in special education currently so we discuss this a lot, too.  The special education teacher who co-teaches with me during 2nd and 4th period is the best.  He really doesn't do much co-teaching with me, but he is in the classroom and he helps me with reading aloud to students who want it, and prompting students to work when they are not working.  We have this problem frequently in 2nd and 4th and while I work with some students, he works with others.  He has actually taught me so much about IEP's and the processes that go along with those and we have already worked together with plans for my contract hours.  I am going to take his place as co-teacher for several days and he is going to sit down with me and show me how to work on IEP's and I'm going to go to several IEP, SAT, and 504 meetings with him next semester!  He has been extremely helpful as I really love my collaborative classes and hope to teach more of these in the future. :-)

Blog #7

"Without using last names, which child do you think you influenced most this week? In what way (academic, social, emotional)?"

Charles.  I am so happy with the progress he is making the effort he is showing and this has taken weeks to get from him!  This particular student is hands-down one of the laziest students I have ever worked with - but I have found out that he really liked working with scary stories and he likes to read aloud in class.  Once I found out this strength, I used it to my advantage by frequently involving him in this activity because is good at it and praising him for doing so well.  We also did a writing assignment and he was refusing to do the work more than writing a paragraph.  I said, "Charles, you are smart and very capable of writing more than a paragraph.  Let's see what we can work on together," and he scoffed immediately, laughed a little, and said, "smart... ha! yeah, right."  There was the problem.  I sat there, discussing all of his strengths as a student, and although he has weaknesses to, who doesn't?, we worked on his writing together.  That was the pivotal moment I needed with him because for the rest of the class period, he would call me over and ask how his writing looked, and how he could improve it.  He ended the assignment with a solid 3 paragraphs that, although had a few grammatical errors and needed to flow better, we could work on that later.  That was a week ago from yesterday and all throughout this week, although it still takes major prompting sometimes, he gets his work done and his journals have even been improving in length.  I have been writing back and forth with him a lot more, and he has even stopped by the classroom to say hello twice this week.  I'm really hopeful that this will continue throughout the rest of the semester, and hopefully next semester when I'm gone, as well.

Blog #6

"Reflect on what you have observed about the students’ learning styles/multiple intelligences."

Although relevant to all of my classes, this is especially relevant to my 11th grade classes.  I have so many 11th graders with IEP's who need many different teaching styles and methods and on top of that, each student has different learning styles, obviously.  So many of my 11th graders are creative and artistic and do extremely well with work where I have use art and writing together.  They love anything creative.  I also have a lot of students who are great with hands-on activities so I have done the best I could integrating this into the curriculum, for example, when we read "Nature" by Emerson, we went outside and had class in nature.  What better way to learn about nature than to be in it?  I had them use their 5 sense, as Emerson does in his writing, and they had to write about their experience and later about the place that they go in their lives that relaxes them the most, or their favorite place where they go to escape from the world, just as Emerson did in his writing.  They loved it, and some of the students who I have a really hard time getting them to be produtive worked really hard on this assignment.  With 10th and 11th graders, I try to give them multiple assignments throughout each unit, using writing, art, media, and verbal assignments and thus far I have been extremely happy with the results and I am learning which students need to work on their skills in some areas and where students already have major strengths!