Rough Day

The title of this blog entry pretty much sums up the kind of day I had. It was rough going for about 90% of today. There is a lot of student testing taking place this week and parent/teacher conferences are coming up next week so my cooperative teacher has been really swamped with work. She was out of the classroom for the morning so I was in charge during this time and taught my maths lesson, which went really great. But things kind of went downhill from there. My co-op teacher came in right as the students were finishing up with maths and she gave me a few workbooks for students to complete. It was very difficult balancing between students who were already finished with all of their work and trying to help students who hadn't even begun because they were not listening, messing around, chatting, etc. I found it very challenging trying to spend any kind of quality time helping students individually when there are 31 of them and only 1 of me. The students who got through the work so fast were up out of their seats and messing with other children, which made it so difficult for me to keep focused on the students that needed help or a reminder to keep working and stop chatting. In general, there was just too much noise throughout the day and I felt like every other minute I was having to raise my voice and correct behaviors. It's a much different experience than teaching 3rd grade. Children that young need a lot more reminders to stay in their seat otherwise it seems everyone is out of their seats talking to someone else on the other side of the room.

By the late morning, the resource teacher, who comes in every day, finally arrived but the students were still so lively and it was definitely a challenge to keep them focused on learning and less on chatting and tattling on one another. By the afternoon, my cooperative teacher was back in the classroom and things settled down a bit more with the three of us there. I was talking to my cooperative teacher after school today about how the day went and she was very reassuring and told me that it can be difficult even for her to always keep them attentive.

I'm glad to have a cooperating teacher that offers encouragement like that. So I'm taking today as a good learning experience and trying not to dwell on it too much. Hopefully tomorrow goes smoother. Two positive things that I did take away from today, however, is that my voice is getting stronger and I am getting a better with discipline. One goal that I have for myself is to learn how to manage such a large class better so that I can be able to help all of the students that need it instead of spending so much time on correcting behaviors. If I can learn how to do that better I think I will have a much less difficult time getting students to complete their work and do it correctly.

Not sure what my plans are for the weekend yet, but hoping to get a bit of time to just relax. Hope everyone has a great Friday and a fun weekend!