I started off Friday with a community building exercise. I had students pull popsicle sticks to create pairs. Then I had students get into those pairs and for the next 7-10 minutes I told them to find out everything that they had in common with their partner. When the time expired I had them circle up and they shared the stuff that they had in common with their partners. After everyone had gone, I asked them questions about the exercise and how they liked finding things in common with their partner. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and wanted to do more of it. I enjoy community building activities too and I think I need to do more of it. Creating a low affective filter (fancy teacher talk for making everyone feel comfortable) is really important when teaching, especially with the kids that I'm working with. If it's one thing that I've learned working with urban youth it's that rapport is everything. If you don't have a relationship with the kids then you can't get shit from them. They won't do shit if they don't think they can trust you. And if you can't control a classroom they won't respect you. The hazing that I went through when I first started... It's like the kids are trying to see if you will stick around when they give you shit. If you do, then some trust gets built.
After the community building exercise, I gave an oral quiz on metacognition. I went around and called on students and asked for a question from one of the 3 elements. It's a serious problem when a kid can't even give me one meta-cognitive question and we've been discussing it for a while. Thankfully, there were more kids that could give me a question then not. Still, this is going to be the foundation of my teaching so I better find more ways to get them to learn metacognitive questions. I dropped the ball on flashcards and so when I get back from break I'm going to make them create flashcards. Then we are going to drill for 3-5 minutes everyday until they know it. I had told them they were going to have a quiz on it and most were happy that I decided not to. They had checked out already and giving a test on Friday would have set myself and them up for failure. It's hard enough to get kids to study for stuff, but a day before a 2 week break...forgetaboutit!
So now I'm on break and still have to finish up a bunch of work for credentialling classes. The problem is that I'm burned out. I'm totally burned out with university and all the classes I'm taking. That on top of being a new high school social studies teacher. This break will hopefully charge up my batteries so that I'll be good to go again.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment