Sunday, October 13, 2013

Reflect & Connect 10/7

Dear Flexible Teachers,

This week in second grade, I learned the true importance of being flexible. All of my professors kept mentioning this work in the first few weeks of our classes and implied that you have to be flexible to be apart of the UTRPP. Sunday night I received a text message from my collaborating teacher that she would like for me to take over the class on Monday morning when she will be in meetings all day. I was beyond excited, literally jumping up and down in my room. I felt comfortable enough to teach the class because I have been there every morning since September 3rd. After the excitement was over I realized that I do not know what I will be teaching them. I never make lesson plans with my CT because we plan out the week together on Mondays. She texted me saying that everything would be ready in the morning and I will be using a sub plan. I was very nervous because I am the type of person who needs to have a plan for everything, but when I walked in on Monday morning I was ready to be flexible or whatever the morning through at me. The sub plan my CT had for me was very simple for me to understand, since we were working on one story all past week. I kept the morning routine the same but just added my "teacher touch" into the morning meeting and lesson plan. During the morning meeting I had my students share something fun they did this past weekend and I was so excited to see my shy students sharing their stories. I gave extra time at the carpet so everyone had a chance  share what they did this past weekend. Now that my CT has let me takeover the morning meeting I really would like to add more ideas for the Morning Meeting book that I read for my Classroom Management class.
I love the whole concept and the way morning meetings can change a classroom. The problem that I am dealing with right now is that I am debating if I should incorporate sharing or an activity because I know our time is limited in the morning. We already have a morning message and a greeting but I am unsure if I should add a sharing section because the children are very close with each other since they have grown up at the same school together. But on the other hand I think sharing time is very important to teach social skills and to talk about the children's emotions because most of class time is dealing with academics. I would also like to incorporate an activity to wake the children up and have them be more excited about the school day. If any of you guys have a suggestion please feel free to comment below!

Flexibility is a very important concept to master as a teacher. I feel from the past weeks I have been in the second grade and my USF education classes I have learned how to be a flexible teacher. This has been a little bit of a tough time for me because I need to always have a plan, know due dates in advance, and I want my lessons to go perfectly in the classroom. The perfect planned teacher in me has change to now a more plan ABC teacher. I am flexible to expect things to not go as planned and my CT has taught me to always have a backup plan, (my ABC plans). I took on last Monday with not knowing the lesson plan and the sub told me I did an amazing job. She said she did not have to worry about anything going wrong in the classroom because of how confident I was with the children. This made me very happy and proved that I can be flexible.

Sincerely,
New ABC Plan Teacher

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