D-Day+2

Today was a good day. For starters, I was blessed with a whopping 6 and a half hours of sleep, so I was feeling a bit more alive when I walked into school this morning, my first 7:15 early duty notwithstanding.

What I noticed most today is that many of the students are beginning to warm up to me (not that they had been at all cold during my first two days). For example, a couple of the classes today had to report to the gym for about 10 minutes each for yearbook pictures. As I walked with the classes during their respective class periods, several crowded around me and wanted to know all about me -- everything from how old I am to how long it took me to grow my beard (just leave it to freshman boys to ask that question; and after I answered, one of them piped up that he could grow one too; it was hilarious!). Walking back, other students wanted to know more about the music I play (my ST informed some of them that I am a musician) and some fellow musicians shared their thoughts on music, the instruments they played, and one even asked me to play guitar at his church. I am sure they would treat any student teacher in a similar way, but it's nice to feel welcomed and liked. I suppose the honeymoon will last until I'm assigning homework!

These experiences throughout the day led to a conversation with my ST about the importance of "getting students on your side." She has clearly done so with her students, and through my time in her classes, I hope I will be able to do the same.

Another bright spot today was my involvement in the classroom steadily continuing to increase. During the 5th period 11th grade bell-ringer, one of the tasks facing students was correctly punctuating a group of words. After they correctly placed all necessary commas, I asked them if they understood why they were correct. Surprisingly, they didn't know why they were right! So I took a minute or two to explain (trying to use as little technical terminology as possible) the idea of reordered adverbial phrases: when an adverb phrase is moved from its natural position to the front of the sentence, that change is denoted by placing a comma between the adverbial phrase and the independent clause.

I love teaching grammar, and I believe it is my strongest content area. So, that experience in class led to Mrs. Manning and I talking about the possibility of my unit being focused on grammar. And I think it sounds pretty promising.