In Pursuit

 I think over the course of this semester and my time observing and helping out in the classroom, one of the biggest things I've learned is how much more complicated teaching is than I thought. It isn't just teachers reading a lesson plan and grading. It's so much more intricate than that. Teacher's have to cater those lesson plans to state standards. They have to make sure their lessons plans line up with other teachers. They may have to adjust those lessons plans to meet the needs of their students. They have to IDENTIFY the needs of their students. They have to uphold standards, but be flexible. Teaching is so much more fluid than I thought. The process of blogging throughout the semester has been... frustrating. I'm pretty bad at articulating things I've experiences. But it has helped me stay mindful, especially regarding my own learning. Even in my other college classes, I've caught myself observing my professors more than the actual class content! I

 While mathematics may have been a... difficult subject thus far to observe a lot of what we've learned, it DOES happen to be a rather good opportunity to observe standards at work. Math is all about rules of course! One of the main things I noticed is that math teachers all seem to take great care to teach things simultaneously. Even when one teacher had a sub, they didn't just goof off or watch a video. The substitute had to TEACH math and when I asked it was because they don't want the student to fall behind the other teacher's classes. On the same note, no teachers were allowed to move faster with their classes than the others. They had regular meetings to make sure everyone was on the same track. I don't think scheduling is a part of UEN standards, but because they adhere to such a schedule it allows them to make sure they can get to ALL the standards set for secondary math. A... weird thing I noticed regarding standards is that after going through a lot of the

 This week I hit my 20 hour mark in my service learning. I have been having an... interesting time, but with finals coming up Im not sure I will schedule any additional days. Looking back at the few different classrooms I've sat in, it is based on my assumption that the largest area of diversity in the Jr High in general is a very large Latino student population. Almost every day before class starts the conversations I overhear tend to be in Spanish. I think it is difficult to teach math in a... diverse way. There are some things I've noticed that I assume just to be their teaching styles, but in hindsight may be ways to cater to a diverse classroom. For one thing, every single math teacher I've sat in does demonstrates problems via a projector. This could allow students that don't speak as much English still able to follow along and learn by example. Another interesting accommodation I noticed had nothing to do with language diversity, but in my opinion was still the t

This week was definitely... eye opening as far as my service learning goes. I did that big project I mentioned in my last couple posts. Basically every math student at Lakeridge had to take this math test for the district and then I had to transfer their answers to a bubble sheet. I think I filled in thousands of bubbles over two days of volunteering and I would NOT call it fun. I enjoyed being able to do that for the teacher though. Because the process was so long, I was there for a lot longer time. I got to sit in on a few classes I hadn't met before and the unique students that came with them.  Because of that, I got to see something that sort of tied back to our classroom learning. In one of the teachers last periods of the day, her class is (based on my assumptions) predominantly lower income. I asked the teacher what kind of challenges that posed and what she had to do to address them. She told me one of the biggest problems is that the district is moving more and more to hom

This week was a little out of the ordinary for my service learning again. I will be helping the entire math department at Lakeridge with a big student project next week that I've been told involves filling in hundreds of bubble sheets. I'm excited to help those teachers out with the busywork, but in the meantime I cut back on my hours there since I will be spending so much time next week. That being said, I will have to go off previous week's experiences.  I have exclusively been volunteering with math teachers for my service learning. When one teacher doesn't have anything for me to do, they offer me up to the rest of their department. This wasn't exactly planned, It was just who was willing to have me. Math, in my opinions, is a very hard subject to use engaged learning in. Especially at the higher levels. In fact, the teachers I have been working with told me that "Engaging students in math" is their district focus this school year. In texts shared with

 The most influential adult figure in my life growing up, other than my parents, was my high school Biology teacher. He believed in me, but more importantly he made ME believe in me. He's the reason I want to be a teacher and I know that someday I want to have the kind of effect on my students that he had on me. My service learning this week was short since I'm going to be spending a far more significant amount of time helping in a couple weeks. But even with this short time, I can see the effect the teacher I have been sitting in with has on her students. One thing that I noticed she does to establish a personal connection with every student, is that she takes time to go around to every single desk to check in with them individually. She doesn't treat the class as one entity, she seems to make sure that every student gets one-on-one time every class, even if it's brief. I've also noticed that she recognizes student's skills by offering to let them come up and d