Gratitude Goes a Long Way - 05/09/19

During my regular leisurely stroll from third grade to first grade, I noticed a bulletin board on which students could write thank-you notes to their teachers. Although the notes were very simple, I am sure that each and every note meant an awful lot to the teachers. Also, between walking in and out of AEMS every day, I have noticed their are big chalk words on the ground that express love and gratitude towards the teachers. I got a lot of "thank you's" today (and every day at AEMS) from different students that I worked with, and those simple two words can really make a difference in your mood and the attitude with which you approach things. I made a conscious effort today to thank the teachers that are letting me work in their classrooms and the students who put effort into learning what I was trying to teach them. I know that when people say "thank you" to me that I feel a lot more more motivated and willing to help with a positive attitude, and just from observing, I've noticed that students feel more motivated to work and put in effort when you acknowledge and thank them for their effort.

The last few days in third grade have been slightly less hands-on for me, because they've been going over questions and strategies for their practice tests. I've been explaining little parts of problems to different students here and there, but mostly I was taking advantage of that time to observe the way that Mr. Hubbard teaches. I see the great admiration and respect that his students (and other teachers) hold for him, and I look up to him as a great teacher. Today, I got the opportunity to take half of the class at a time and work with them on multiplication and division. I felt good about what and how I was teaching, and I made sure to explain different methods as to how to solve problems, because having been a math student for 13 years, I have learned that different students definitely find different methods easier. I did groups of equations with them that were related such as "4x15=?" and "60/4=?". I also taught them little tricks that I remembered Mr. Hubbard briefly going over in class, such as the "multiplying 11 by a single digit" rule as well as the "5678 rule" which says that 7x8=56. I was grateful for the opportunity to get to actually teach and work with groups of students. I found that the hardest part about teaching is that the learning speed of students is so staggered. Some students can answer any basic multiplication and division problems in their heads, while others need each individual step to be explained to them. There is no problem with that except that the faster students get slightly antsy and bored waiting for other students to finish. I gave these students the chance to explain their working to the other students, which I thought was really helpful because I think having someone in the same boat as you (who is just learning it) explaining to you might make it more understandable, as opposed to someone who knows it all inside out. One frustration that I had though, was that some students looked at the numbers, immediately called the problem too hard, and then refused to even attempt solving it. I prodded them until they tried it because they are very bright and I know that they do know how to get the answer.

In first grade, students did morning message and then listened to a story about a boy who befriends an alien and later has to send the alien back to space because it misses its family. Students were then given the task of writing stories about an alien coming to visit them. I love being apart of creative writing in these lower grades, because they have such great ideas that I can help them with putting into written words on paper. I was walking around the room helping students with spelling words, but was mostly hanging around with a little dude on the carpet. He was a more shy boy but he was very sweet and was excited to write his story. I thought it was really funny that he would look at me whenever he didn't know how to spell a word, and I understood what he meant when he looked at me without using any words. I prompted him with open ended questions so that he could use more words to speak about and describe his story, because knowing what his story was about would making writing it down much easier.

Mrs. Peters third grade class was kind of similar to first grade in that they continued on their creative writing stories. Students are starting to finish up typing their stories and doing their drawings. I worked with a young man on finishing his story that we worked on together yesterday. I felt very happy when he thanked me for my help at the end, and the substitute teacher thanked me for working with him when she had to help someone else. Of course I was more than happy to do it, but I don't deny that it feels really nice when people acknowledge what you're doing. At the end of the day, the third graders got to draw their versions of Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk on lego people templates. A lot of them made the Jack's in their stories animals, so it was cool to see the creativity that they used to turn a lego person template into an animal character. I particularly liked the character, "Gucci Sloth" or G.S for short.

I taught 2 gymnastics classes today. I had my higher level girls at AEMS and then a private at Andover Hub. The issue with group gymnastics is that when one or two students don't focus, it disrupts the rest of the class and other students get frustrated. I had two students today that were endlessly distracting each other and not following instructions. I whipped out my "teacher" voice and told them that they needed to start behaving and listening or else they would be separated, or have to sit out for a while, or even that I would talk to their parents. I got a little frustrated when they kind of just laughed at me and told me to "do it". They ended up sitting out for the last 5 minutes while I worked with other students, which I felt terrible about, but I also felt it was unfair to have their constant disruptions ruining the class for the other students that were behaving and actually wanting to learn gymnastics. I want to know what teachers are supposed to do when they feel like they've tried everything but students still won't listen to them. It's really hard! I was originally planning to do stations where students would go around a circuit with a partner, but I felt like some students wouldn't focus and be safe if they were anywhere other than at a station with me, which made me a little bit sad. However, most of the students were very well behaved and worked very hard, which I was happy to see. During the lesson at the Hub, the student I've been working with hit a few full handstands from standing today, which I was so so proud of! We've been working on handstands for the last couple of weeks, and today she tried to do it from standing for the first time. It took a couple of attempts but she eventually got the hang of it, and I think she'll be doing straight handstands from standing all by herself in the next week or two. Progress is amazing!!

Time: 8:45
Hours: 9
Total Hours: 80