Residency, Whittier Elementary School - Alex Lange, 7 hours

I went to Whittier Elementary twice this week as it was my last week there and I taught my lesson on Friday. They were two important days so I feel like they’re deserving of separate posts.

On Wednesday, Mr. Alex was out sick so we had a rotation of other teachers come in during their planning time to watch over the students. Each teacher stayed for about 1 hour and would leave and another teacher would come in. Most of the day the students did independent reading as they had just finished a major lesson for their social sciences class (the aforementioned book project.)

I went over algebra with the students during math time. Another teacher and I organized it so that the different groups of students (orange, blue, and purple group) would rotate and get to work on computer math, independent math book time, or come to the kitten table to get help from me and go over problems together. Specialist was different that day so instead of choir as usual, they went to media. It was also too cold for outdoor recess so we stayed inside.

With Mr. Alex gone iIt was difficult, and I left the day very exhausted. But I’m so glad that I went.

For one thing, I was a consistency. I knew what normally happened on Wednesday by then so I helped the substitutes get even a gist of what was supposed to be going on. I also figured out one way to command the room, and have been working on making sure it works. i would have the students do the “if you can hear my voice clap once” thing, and it would grab the attention of a few students, but I would end with “if you can hear my voice shout ‘YeeeHaw!’” or some other fun thing to say. Every student, every time, would do that part. Students just want to make fun noises sometimes and they took the opportunity. The harder part was keeping their attention. This moment I had to remind myself not to talk over the other students. It’s really hard for me, but I’m realizing if theres a fight for loudest voice, 33 students win ever time. I would say “I can wait” and I would just stay quiet until everyone stopped talking and paid attention. I’m going to keep working on this. With so many students in a classroom, I have to exercise patience and not add to that kind of chaos. I also learned that substitutes need much more support.