Day 2

This morning began in a haze -- fog on the ground, and fog in my head. The previous day was intense: I was up at 6, at school from 7:30 to 3:30, drove straight to campus to take of some errands, stayed on campus from 5-9 working a part time job that I had to take that involves calling prospective students (student-teachers are unpaid, so on top of loans, I had to take this job just to eat), band practice from 9-10, Wal-Mart for groceries after that, and then I was finally able to collapse into my bed around midnight.

That said, I was excited for another day in the classroom. Throughout the day my involvement in each class increased. I assisted with bell-ringer assignments, circulated around the room answering questions, interacted with students on a more familiar level, and learned everyone's name in two of the classes (we'll see if I can remember tomorrow or not....I think I've got it).

The highlight of the day came in third period senior English. One of the students had a couple of questions about the assignment he was writing, and as I read over it, I realized that he had not mastered several vital concepts. So, I spent a few minutes with him at his quietly explaining and writing out some examples in an effort to bridge the gap. This student had written about a paragraph and a half without using any punctuation, his syntax was badly skewed and never varied from S+V+O pattern. The main issue I tried to tackle was punctuation, so I explained the idea of clauses and independent clauses and how to identify them quickly and easily. After identifying clauses, the correct places for punctuation become more clear. Tomorrow I'm going to follow up with him on his questions and try to see if the information helped.

As I have been preparing my classroom management plan, I have been impressed with my ST's methods. As I have mentioned previously, she maintains clear control without the result being a tense, lifeless classroom. She begins each class with a bell-ringer, writes the day's tasks on the board, and typically maintains close physical proximity to the students by constantly coursing through the room. The only discipline problem she typically deals with is talking out of turn or off subject, and her method dealing with such issues is simple and effective: after one or two warnings, she keeps the class 30 seconds after the bell, followed by 1 minute if the problem arises again. So far, no class has been kept longer than a minute. In addition to being simple, fair, and effective, it naturally lends itself to self-correction: when one or two students are out of line, often several other students call them back to task without the teacher having to address the issue at all; it is likely that self-discipline encouraged in this way could naturally lead to self-motivation in numerous other ways. And it seems that the goal of every teacher should be to teach in such a way that the students end up educating themselves.