I will apologize in advance for the lack of order within this post. My neurons are firing at warp speed. There. Is. Just. So. MUCH. To. Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! *collective breath*
Alright, let me just start by saying that I like Redken. They have this saying around the school: "Once a Redken, always a Redken." I would have to agree with this school spirit motto. Although I have only experienced one semester at Redken, I know that I will carry a piece of the school inside of me for the rest of my life. The staff is full of loving people and the students are wonderful, creative individuals. I feel that my experiences with the Redken family have been a crucial part of my professional development and have intensified my passion for teaching.
My CT has been a source of support and constructive feedback. Mrs. Annette [this is NOT her real name] initially scared me a bit. No, she is not a mean lady. She is just very experienced and very professional which can very intimidating for an untried PST like myself. I quickly realized that Mrs. Annette is a very caring instructor who always has the best interests of her students at heart. Mrs. Annette is NOT one of "those teachers"; you know, the ones who show up about five minutes before the school day begins and jet out of the parking-lot at the end of the day like they're training to be the next Nascar champion. Mrs. Annette takes a great deal of pride in her role as a professional educator. She devotes a sizable amount of time to preparing meaningful lessons for her students and she regularly attends school athletic events and other extracurricular functions as a means of supporting the interests and efforts of her students. Her level of devotion is something that I respect and strive for within my own career.
My semester with Mrs. Annette has shown me a great deal about who I am as a teacher. I have come to see my strengths and my weaknesses. My strengths are that I am patient, determined, energetic, creative, and passionate. My weaknesses are that I am still very inexperienced with classroom management, effective time management, lesson planning, and giving clear instructions. Mrs. Annette assures me that these weaknesses are normal for where I am in my program; she says that time and experience will help me to improve in my trouble areas. I think that she is correct. I have already seen a great deal of personal growth since August [the start of the fall semester] and I know that I will continue to develop my teaching skills in the months and years to follow.
In terms of the teaching that I have done this semester: I am finishing my last lesson tomorrow! Mrs. Annette gave me the opportunity to teach a month's worth of lessons to her sophomores. I taught the vast majority of their novel [Rumble Fish] with the behind-the-scenes support of Mrs. Annette. As a whole, my part of the unit went well. There were several hiccups along the way [mostly minor classroom management problems], but the overall experience was good. Mrs. Annette told me that she feels that I have done a good job teaching the sophomores and that they [the students] know that I care about them and want them to learn. I appreciated that positive feedback because I was having days where I would beat myself up over all the things that I should have done better. -- Tomorrow is the final exam over the novel. I wrote it myself, from scratch. It features twenty-five multiple choice questions, a short answer section, a quote section, a section on character descriptions, and three different essay prompts [students only have to write over one prompt of their choosing]. As I was writing the test, I was amazed by how LONG it took! I seriously spent about three and a half HOURS writing the final exam. I was very careful in my test composition. I wanted to make sure that the questions were clear and effective. It was this painstaking attention to detail and format that caused the test writing to take so long. However, I must say: the product reflects the time and effort put into it. Mrs. Annette thought that it was very well contrived [with the exception of some typos and tense error]. I spent an additional hour on the Jeopardy PowerPoint that was used as their test review and another thirty minutes on finding graphic organizers to aid in their review. -- Have you been keeping track? That was FIVE HOURS of time spent planning two days worth of instruction. If you do the math on that, it breaks down down to two and a half hours of planning for EACH 90 minute class period or 1.7 minutes of prep time for EACH minute of classroom instruction. And some people mock teaching as an "easy profession"... Clearly, they lack basic math skills and common sense.
