Student Teacher

My student teacher started with me this week and will be in next week as well.  She is just doing her 25 hours of observation.  It is so fun having her.  I will call her "A".  I had her as a student in Geometry and in advisory for 4 years so I really got to know her and am proud to introduce her to my students.  She is going to school to be a math teacher, special ed, God bless her.

I enjoy sharing my thoughts, plans, planning process, activities, and ideas with her.  The first class she saw was my Accelerated Algebra 2 class and she was amazed how much we did in the one hour.  It was our first day back from holiday break and I had a lot of activities to review logarithms.  Then, we went to my Foundations of Algebra 1 class and everything slowed all the way down as we were plotting points on a coordinate plane.  It is good that she sees this range.

I was so happy when a math teacher colleague who also had A said she was really happy to be with me because I am willing to take risks and she would learn a lot with me :)

It is also fun when "A" tells me what she remembers about my class.  She loved the scavenger hunt I had the kids do around town and asked if I did it anymore, but I don't teach Geometry anymore, so nope, don't use it still.  She told me she loved the stitch curving (using straight lines to draw in such a way that it looks like a curve ).  Again, no geo so no stitch curving.

I am trying out my new idea of an Algebra 2 ebook and collected the students' work with individual problems.  She helped me look through them to make sure they were correct before the kids record them in Adobe Spark.  I can't wait to hear all the kids explain the problems in their own rooms.

Some tips I have given "A":
1.)  Find a comfortable pair of shoes and buy them in brown and black.
2.)  Color code everything - plans and folders
3.)  Have some sort of shelving system for current worksheets, old worksheets, graded worksheets, etc.
4.)  Name everything appropriately and descriptively (?) and organize them into good folders so you can find them later.
5.)  Make notes to yourself on this years plans for next year - how did the lesson go - too short, too long, quiz too easy too hard?  I love finding these notes the next year.

She will be in again next week.