Sunday, October 21, 2007

The Start of Something New

Tomorrow is the day, we met on Friday to discuss her comfort zone, my releasing of control. I am so excited! My student teacher is starting tomorrow. Luckily, she has been in my building since the start of school, she has gotten to know the staff, and she has seen my classroom in action. I have asked, and she is ready, and man is she good too. I have so much I want to share with her, to discuss with her, mostly, I want her to love her experience.

I want her to walk away prepared to take on her own classroom. I remember my experience, it was hard, my teachers didn't have discipline/management strategies in their classrooms. They did but it was screaming, yelling, and threatening. This is not who I am, and it ended negatively. I was ready for my own classroom but I had no skills for management. I had to find these tools on my own. Thank goodness my next school was a school that had many teachers who's philosophy was to treat children with kindness and respect.

Here are some things I am not ready to release control of while she is there:
1. Writer's Workshop: man, I am just getting my groove and loving every minute of the work. My kids have learned so much. I will relinquish the control, my I will miss it though!
2. Reader's Workshop: this is my first year and we are finally going to start the work of making connections, learning the story elements, etc. I will give it up, but I will miss it!
3. The connections: my students and I are so connected. We have gained so much ground with each other, it will be hard not to miss them. I will definitely step in and see them at the end of the day, sometimes I guess. That will be hard.

Here are some things I want to get done while I have no responsibilities:
1. I want to do conferencing in other classrooms, with writing and reading.
2. I want to do some mini lessons in other classrooms, especially where other teachers are struggling with elements.
3. I want to really check out and review some books from my school library and really get to know them.

I love setting goals, and now seems like a good time. Good luck student teacher!

1 comment:

Amy @ Literacy Launchpad said...

I don't do the kind of teaching where I would ever have a student teacher, which is probably a good thing, because I have control issues. Teachers are passionate about their work (most of them). It must be so difficult to hand over your classroom to a student teacher. Glad to hear you have plans to take advantage of the benefits. Good idea!