It's Thursday night, which means that I am 100% exhausted. A full week of teaching and lesson planning will do that to you. I still have to finish up my plan for tomorrow's lesson (writing/identifying equations that represent real-life situations) and write a plan for next Wednesday's lesson (solving word problems that describe systems of linear equations), but I got exciting news today, so I thought I'd share a quick update.
EXCITING NEWS: I finally have my actual teaching assignment! While I've been hired for two months by a charter network in New Orleans, and I've known which school I'm going to be at for about three weeks, I didn't know exactly what I'm teaching until today. I'm going to be teaching third grade math! This is terrifying, since I'm finally getting a sense of what teaching middle school is all about, but I'm so excited to finally be able to prepare for an actual position. It's also a lead teaching job, which is great. I'm the only first-year TFAer on my team, but there are about 15 other first-years at my school.
OTHER EXCITING NEWS: This week has been, on the whole, really great. My kids are invested, and they are behaving so well in class. Our success story for the week has been Malik--our lowest performer last week, we got him invested in himself after he got 68% on his weekly assessment last week. Now he's passed every single exit ticket I've given him this week, and he is so eager to participate. It's been awesome to see him get excited about math, especially when reading is such a struggle for him. My CMA was observing my lesson on Tuesday, and he videotaped it. Malik came over to ask him for help with a question, and my CMA got him on camera talking about math. It was so great to see him talk about how he liked what Jon and I were doing in class--making him work hard--and that he knew exactly what we expected of him. There have been moments like this all week: not having to give a single behavioral consequence all class on Tuesday, getting everyone to pass their exit ticket for the first time, having the kids beg us for more math questions during a review game today, and having one student ask me if we could go over her assessment during lunch today to make sure that she would understand and do better the next time.
This week has had hard stuff too--our midterm assessment scores were nowhere near where we wanted them to be or where we think they can be. But I'm so excited for tomorrow, for the next two weeks with my kids in Atlanta, and to finally get into my very own classroom in New Orleans East and start getting ready for my third graders!
EXCITING NEWS: I finally have my actual teaching assignment! While I've been hired for two months by a charter network in New Orleans, and I've known which school I'm going to be at for about three weeks, I didn't know exactly what I'm teaching until today. I'm going to be teaching third grade math! This is terrifying, since I'm finally getting a sense of what teaching middle school is all about, but I'm so excited to finally be able to prepare for an actual position. It's also a lead teaching job, which is great. I'm the only first-year TFAer on my team, but there are about 15 other first-years at my school.
OTHER EXCITING NEWS: This week has been, on the whole, really great. My kids are invested, and they are behaving so well in class. Our success story for the week has been Malik--our lowest performer last week, we got him invested in himself after he got 68% on his weekly assessment last week. Now he's passed every single exit ticket I've given him this week, and he is so eager to participate. It's been awesome to see him get excited about math, especially when reading is such a struggle for him. My CMA was observing my lesson on Tuesday, and he videotaped it. Malik came over to ask him for help with a question, and my CMA got him on camera talking about math. It was so great to see him talk about how he liked what Jon and I were doing in class--making him work hard--and that he knew exactly what we expected of him. There have been moments like this all week: not having to give a single behavioral consequence all class on Tuesday, getting everyone to pass their exit ticket for the first time, having the kids beg us for more math questions during a review game today, and having one student ask me if we could go over her assessment during lunch today to make sure that she would understand and do better the next time.
This week has had hard stuff too--our midterm assessment scores were nowhere near where we wanted them to be or where we think they can be. But I'm so excited for tomorrow, for the next two weeks with my kids in Atlanta, and to finally get into my very own classroom in New Orleans East and start getting ready for my third graders!
Kate, you are thinking like a real teacher! I'm very proud of you. It will be great to have a chance to give third-graders the knowledge that you see missing in your middle school students.
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