student teaching

Yes, it has begun.  Student teaching.  It's fun but also exhausting, which is the reason for not having posted lately.  I've been taking notes, though, because there have been some cool experiences.  My goal is to post them as they come so I can be more on top of record-/journal-keeping, but here's a collection from the past couple of weeks.

I've been trying hard to learn my students' names, since there is friendship (and also teacher authority) in knowing people's names.  Cool experience #1 was a girl making the comment to someone at her table that "she's really good with names."  I had, in fact, hardly learned any names from her particular class - she heard me say the one or two that I either knew or had looked at off people's papers on their desks.  I think it still does something for the class environment, though, if everyone thinks you know their names.  :)

There was a test right before I started at the school.  Almost every person failed that test - as in, like, 20%'s and such.  I was the one who graded those tests.  Unfortunately for me, one particularly interesting and (at the the time) vindictive girl found out and wasted no time in making sure people knew that I was the one who had graded them.  Nevertheless, I was not too worried, because to be honest, I'm not terribly worried about being popular here, but I was a little nervous - I didn't know how much damage she could cause for me.  And as much as I didn't care if people loved me, I also didn't especially want her making enemies everywhere for me.  The next day, though, she came to the classroom after school and asked for help in preparing to retake the test.  A minute later, as another girl got up to ask my mentor teacher for help with her retake, Girl 1 said to "ask her for help instead.  She's better at explaining it, trust me."  Now, I'm not saying I'm better than my mentor, although I may have been for that particular girl.  The point is that she didn't hate me, now we're friends, and that was a somewhat monumental moment for me - the moment my students started to see me as a competent teacher.

Two students that are cousins were in after school making sure they were ready for the end of the term.  Because it was after school, when they talked to me, I spoke to them some in English.  We talked about getting married, what school to go to, how one of the cousins is brilliant.... just generally got to know each other.  It's fun when they start to see you as a real person instead of just a teacher :)

I saw one of my students at the grocery store! She's a bagger there. And she recognized me! I felt kind of bad because I didn't recognize her at all - it was just after a couple of days of student teaching and she sits in the back.  But it was still fun.

Yesterday we introduced a Powerpoint assignment that they'll be doing about families.  My mentor gave them an example using her family, and afterwards, they all also wanted to see mine.  Proving my theory once again that it's good to use examples from your own life - it's fun to see evidence of teachers' lives outside of school!