Today, October 8th, while I was observing, I noticed that my teacher is a little disorganized with her lesson. During period two, even though she is in that same classroom and has prep period one, she is still scrambling to get the POD on the board. She does not have a good start of class because when the students walk in, they begin to chit-chat because she is running around trying to get herself organized. During her prep period one, she goes to coffee or talks to other teachers. She does not utilize the 45 minutes before her classes start. So when her class walks in, she is not prepared. The class does not begin smoothly and after about five minutes, she is finally prepared to start. She repeatedly has to tell her students to stop talking but I think that is because she does not start the class structured. Third period there was a fire drill, which always throws off teachers. This was not told to the teacher so she could not adjust her plans. The students were going over a review sheet before their test.
Then her lunch came, and she did not utilize her lunch time either. She goes out for lunch, but instead of coming back early to prepare for her next class, she gets back right before the bell. I like to be early and overly prepared for everything, and to me, this seems cutting it very close. I would get very nervous with little time to prepare for the next class of students. Period five was the same as period three but without the fire drill. My teacher did show me which students were classified in both period three and five classes, and it was not the students I expected. The students that were classified with IEPs or 504s were quieter students, but the ones that I assumed were classified because of their behavior, were not. That surprised me because I would think there would be more issues with the classified students, but she said her problems are with the regular education students in the inclusion classes. She told me she has one ideal special education student in her period five class. He is quiet and just needs a little more explanation or rephrasing. He is the student I would not think was classified. She has 11 out of 18 students that are classified in her period 3 class, and 5 out of 12 in her period five class. That is a large percentage of students that are classified in an inclusion class.
Then we moved to her duty period in the cafeteria. As we were on our duty, a permanent sub began to have a conversation with me. I found out he is a history major, and this is his 3rd year out of college. He still hasn’t found any job. He has stopped looking for a teacher position. I was also told that there are four history majors as subs in the middle school I observe in, and there is a history teacher going on maternity leave soon. Those four subs are all looking to be picked for a maternity leave sub position. The competition is very difficult for them, and I asked why he did not go back for another certification, and he said that his loans aren’t paid for as is. This is a scary prospect for someone like me because I will be graduating in a few months. The job market is not as lucrative as it used to be.
After duty, 7th and 8th period are her advanced classes. Instead of having things prepared before the class comes in (no one else uses her classroom so having things pre-done is not a problem), she is running around trying to find her POD. She forgot to add the problems, so after 7 minutes of the students being confused, she finally realized her mistake. She did not get to the activity she had planned because of her time management. I feel this interferes with the class. Time is difficult because teachers only get 45 minutes, and she is not using her time wisely to optimize the students learning. I feel if she did prep-work in period one for the day, she would be so much better off. She could have to PODs open on the computer, which would save her time trying to find them. She could have her papers organized differently where she can find them – everything is in folders but it is not effective because she can never find what she is looking for in her folder. I feel a binder would help her so much more.
Well that’s all for now, till next time.
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