It's time to update you on my first week at Harrison High School. As I noted earlier, Harrison is a small school...very small. On Tuesday, I went to a faculty meeting and found it very interesting that there was a lot of talk about teachers covering for each other. I figured I would do my part on Wednesday.
With my mentor teacher off to a regional principal's meeting, I got to cover some courses on day 3 of student teaching. This began with supervising the last fifteen minutes of an elementary PE class. That teacher was also going to the principal's meeting, so I watched elementary kids play basketball. No one got hurt, so I considered it a success. After that, there's advisory. This is sort of a study hall. My mentor teacher has the junior high (all 18 of them) and has them read the whole time. I was a bit nervous that they might not want to read, but it went well aside from a few short conversations
Third hour, I got to go teach English, as I led the seniors in a reading and discussion of John Keats poems. We all read aloud and discussed his life and poems a bit. Then the students started writing their own odes. 4th hour, I made sure the juniors turned in an assignment and we started watching Huck Finn.
Granted, none of these activities are all that taxing, but I did think about this being the first time I was alone in a class with students. It seemed to go well. The students did their work, there were no disciplinary issues, and the discussion that I led went well, with many students participating and adding input. If anything, it was a nice step up from the observing that I've been doing. That's been useful, but I did enjoy taking an active role.
This covering will happen again....I might be covering Spanish next week.
Some other notes:
~The title comes from a quote from my mentor teacher on Monday. She used it to describe the freshman class (five students). I think it could apply to the whole school.
~There's been a lot of catching up this week with the students coming back from break. Next week is also semester tests, so....good luck, kiddos!
~Next up: Lit circles.
Alan
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