ConwayLifeJournal5

Hey friends! Since my last journal entry Kristal and I have taught our lesson to our seventh grade students! At first, I was nervous but that soon went away as soon as I started my lesson. The students responded very well to the lesson, they were very engaged and to be honest they participated more than I expected them to. We turned in our video to Dr. Sherry and even though the actual [process of making the lesson was stressful, I am glad we had to do this and I am excited to student teach and eventually have my own classroom. I learned that my school's policies are pretty much the same as every other school district, however my mentor's policies were different from a "normal" teacher. She is very calm and her presence brings an almost relaxing feeling to the room. She likes quotes and she even has her students do breathing exercises so they can get rid of some stress and focus on the work they have to do during that class. She doesn't have many policies because she is pretty care free as long as they get through they work they have to do that day and that is exactly the type of teacher I want to be. I learned that the curriculum in this class is harder than I thought it would be, when I heard we were going to teach a lesson on grammar, I thought it would be easy. I forgot I haven't had a grammar course since 8th grade and it made me realize that sometimes even if you might not want to teach a certain lesson, you still need to have the same enthusiasm and energy as if you were teaching a lesson you love. I learned that these students do want to learn, all they need is a little motivation and they need to be interested. They way my mentor went about introducing grammar was awesome. She related the material in a way that wasn't boring which caused the students to actually want to come to class and do the work. I hope everybody else's lessons went as well as mine did!!