I met my co-teacher yesterday. She is very nice and much younger than I expected. But then, I expected her to be rather older, since her name is old-fashioned-sounding, like “Ethel,” or “Martha.”
I like how organized she is. In many ways her classroom philosophy aligns with mine, which was how the program coordinators matched us up to begin with. Props to them for a good job doing that, at least in my case so far.
I like how she referred to everything as “ours.” It made me feel less awkward. I was probably not as out-going and initiative-taking as she might have liked, however I do have a valid excuse. Being introduced to so much in such a short time was definitely overwhelming. I have enough confidence in my capabilities to know I’ll learn the ropes like second nature in the future, but right now it’s nothing but @~@.
Our classroom is dinky; can’t be more than half the size of a typical elementary classroom - I would say even bordering on a third of some affluent school’s classrooms (*cough*Brentwood*cough*). We’ll only have about 18 students, but even if I weren’t a natural organizing maniac, that room would force me to become one.
SCUSD uses Open Court. A lot of people have a lot of issues with scripted curricula, but I think it’s decent as long as it’s used in an appropriate way. Besides, it takes out a lot of the boring research tasks so that you can focus a little more on the fun stuff. Cons: this thing is H. U. G. E. As in Highly Useful for Gaining spinal Erosion. The photo above is just for unit 1 (i.e. about a month’s worth of curricula); there are 11 more of these babies, each thicker than the previous one. Obviously, parts must be skipped as there are just not enough hours in the school day. And some people wonder how on earth our students are failing standards - because technically, they are not failing. They learn it eventually; just may or may not be according to the timeline the government mandates.
Ms. M is highly focused and highly goal-oriented, but I think she also understands that not everyone is like that. I’m glad. I’m willing to push myself and take on challenges - might was well do it now and make as many mistakes as I can (so I can learn from them) when I have a huge network of teachers, professors, and classmates to lean on. So when I’m really solo, I’ll know how to avoid mistakes, and look for answers myself whenever they do come up. We are supposed to work our way up to at least 2 full days of SOLO (in caps of course) teaching, with many milestones marked by papers and supervising faculty evaluations, by the end of the semester.
Thus, I’m taking the read aloud responsibilities, plus the transitions surrounding them, starting on day 1. Ms. M reads to her students at least once a day, which is so great for the 1st grade level. Reading aloud was really awkward for me in the beginning, the adult audience wasn’t so encouraging either. But when you read to little kids, it’s so awesome to see them get involved and laugh and do all sorts of interaction with the text. It’s also fun for me to act out the voices and make a fool of myself in general. Puppets are also the l33t, believe it or not. In this age of ipods and video games and electronic “learning equipment,” nothing beats a good old sock with eyes glued on. I’ll probably record myself during practice - put that spanking new webcam to good use.
Despite that feeling in my stomach that I’m going to hurl all over these poor, unsuspecting 1st graders (THAT would make for a memorable first day of school), I’m looking forward to it all.
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