It is essential for teachers to reflect on their teaching as well as classroom interactions in general. Throughout my UFTeach studies I have done many reflections either answering specific questions in regards to the class I was teaching/observing or as in my semester in AT class we used the format of two stars and a wish to reflect back on how our week went. I have included several of my journal entries based on my UFTeach internship with my Algebra 1 classes.

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AT Weekly Journal Entries

January 18- 25, 2017

Star #1:

One thing I did well was getting the students’ attention while teaching at the board.

 

Star #2: 

One thing I learned was how to communicate better. I went to a meeting by one of the GHS teachers who had a guest speaker come in and talk on nonviolent communication and restorative justice in the school system as well as in individuals’ lives.

Wish: 

One thing I would like to know is how to come up with better activities that allow students to learn through doing and having them constructively move about the classroom more.

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Elaboration of my star #2:

On Monday my schedule cleared out so that I was able to go hear a guest speaker that came at the request of one of the ESE teachers at GHS. There were about 10 teachers that showed up to hear what he has to say on restorative justice in schools. I thought it was interesting seeing the few teachers that did show up and their different backgrounds (English, Art, Math, Special Ed and Home-Ec) as well as teachers that were parents and came to try to learn how to better communicate with their kids at home as well.

One of the things Jeff (the speaker) talked about that I thought was very important was looking beyond the surface of how the student is behaving, and looking at why are they behaving that way. Jeff also went over the importance of getting “Needs” not even wants filled in a student’s life. The lack of needs being met, whether mental, physical or emotional needs plays a huge part to understanding students and how to allow them to understand others and themselves better.

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January 26- February 01, 2017

Star #1:

The first star of this week was actually teaching the four Algebra periods with the materials that I came up with last Thursday and when the first idea of grouping themselves with the notecards didn’t go that great during 1st period, I switched to my back-up plan of the colored boxes which they seemed to understand pretty well. The students also filled out their “espresso yourself” worksheet and actually seemed to like it.

 

Star #2: 

My second star would be that I got all the groups done and started doing group activities with some of the classes, such as sage and scribe with 4th period yesterday and 2nd period today.

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Wish:

I wish that the groups in the second period class worked better and that the students didn’t all talk at once. I think I might have to reorganize the groups. The students in the front all are loud and shout out the answers so the students in the back just talk across to each other and only a few actually engage in the lesson. They are hard to do group activities with.

 

Elaboration of my Star #2:

For my second star, I learned how to create groups though it took longer than it should have because I overthought everything and Mrs. Wargo helped me fix them afterwards. I also learned how to let students potentially create their own groups but in an organized way of allowing students into the classroom one at a time (telling them it’s computer generated but really high students first then mid-high, mid-low and low grade wise) and allowing them options for choosing specific seats around the room. This was done with 5th period (smallest class of almost all ESE students so very few highs) Jan 31st and it worked pretty well.

Also figuring how to spread myself about the room during the sage and scribe is interesting to make sure students aren’t just doing it on their own but actually talking with each to solve the problems. It requires a lot of time management because for every set of problems they do I take one required problem off of their homework so allowing myself the time to stamp the problems that I am taking off is important.

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February 02- 08, 2017

Star #1:

This week I liked how I am getting to know more of the students and what they like.

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Star #2:

I am also learning how to grade assignments better and give quizzes. Some of these are rough especially when I see students struggling on something that we went over in class or they should know but don’t, or in the case of hw they don’t check it or turn it in on time.

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Wish:

I wish that it was easier to come up with activities that reached all the students and kept them engaged.

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Elaboration of my wish:

This week I discussed with my 2nd period the importance of being responsible and they discussed what they want in a teacher as well and I was surprised at some of their answers. Most of them actually say they want to learn and would like a teacher that explains things well and keeps the classes attention. As for rewards most of second period wants candy, less hw and extra credit but I was surprised that there were also a couple of boys that wanted me to call home and tell their parents if they were doing well. I have learned a ton from my 2nd period class so far and I just hope that they are learning what I am trying to teach them and that by the end of the week we will both respect each other more. Today was especially rough because one of the students was scaring the other students by using their phone to turn on the tv in the classroom but I don’t know who it was and it was super disruptive and distracting and I lost most of the students attention after that.

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February 09-15, 2017

Star #1:

For my first star something this week I liked was I got to go to an administration/teacher meeting as well as sit in on the teacher union meeting afterwards. The meetings were both fairly short (about 30 minutes each surprisingly) and informative as well as they gave the staff ice cream from D’lites!

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Star #2:

My second star would be actually finishing a lot of grading over the weekend and learning to put the grades into the grade book.

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Wish:

My wish would be that I would be firm enough to discipline students fairly when needed. Today I finally had 2nd period’s attention today in class because Mrs. Wargo sent one of the students to the dean’s office for being loud and distracting, it also helped that the seating was all facing forward (like a basic classroom) for the quiz although I postponed the quiz and just reviewed because I knew they weren’t ready but it definitely got their attention.

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Elaboration of my Star #2:

Grading the student’s papers is a lot harder than I thought it would be. With it being math I figured they either would get it or not. I’m using Mrs. Wargo’s standards for grading and it includes taking off 5 out of 10 points if they don’t grade their work afterwards (so I gave them all red pens on Valentine ’s Day to encourage them to grade their work when they come into class). There are also many students who try to sneak their work in after copying down their answers from the board after all the hw has been stamped. I have had to write more zeros on hws and participation than I would ever have liked to do in a class. Trying to reach out to many of them and I have even seen a couple of them start doing the grading and turning in on time after I have talked with them but many still aren’t interested sadly.

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February 16- 22, 2017

Star #1:

My first star for this past week was having 2nd period actually listening and wanting to learn Tuesday and today. It was mostly because certain students were not there but last night we also did a new seating plan and it seemed to help students not talk as much.

 

Star #2:

My second star this week was getting to spend time getting to know some of the teachers at the school, specifically the ones my mentor teacher works with.

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Wish:

My wish for this week was that I hadn't gotten so behind on grading and learning how to give and grade tests fairly. Also since progress reports were due today I have many students turning in old work or asking for grades to be uploaded into the computer.

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Elaboration on star #2:

This week was a very interesting week and I wish I was able to type in the grades from my home computer but I have to be at the school and creating each new assignment in the program and uploading files as well as grading papers. I had a couple of late nights at the school and still didn't feel like I turned in everything and it was disappointing that so many students did poorly on the test/quiz on Friday and I learned that I am going to have to take it much slower when teaching material and continue to practice a subject more than I would originally think. Mrs. Wargo and I decided to retest the students for their test (quiz for 2nd and 5th period) and take the better of the two because I felt like there were several misconceptions I didn't cover before their test.

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Febuary 23- March 01, 2017

Star #1:

A star that I had for this week was having my second period actually mostly wanting to learn this week. They did better on the quiz this past Friday (1st period not quite as well on their retest though). They have been behaving better since we rearranged the seating. Also I tried the engagement with the horses and other hidden images this week and the students seem to like them.

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Star #2:

Another star I had this week was getting to be with Mrs. Wargo as she made phone calls to parents about students either struggling or absent or misbehaving in class. 

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Wish:

A wish that I had for the week would have been being able to find/design better lesson plans for the zero product property. Maybe I was trying to look too in-depth for a simple topic but I spent so much time looking for a good activity this week and not coming up with much. It was also rough being sick over the weekend and still trying to do a lot (though when I was visiting my small group for church on Monday several of my friends wanted to help me with my grading, just the hw and activities, and helped me catch up some that way also).

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Elaboration on star #2:

The reason I listed calling parents as a star is because I was/am learning how to connect with parents and seeing how parents respond to different news. I was also interesting seeing the result of one phone call ended up in a student coming back to class and confiding in me about some sad things she is going through over the death of a loved one. This included telling me some of her family background as well as how she faked being sick that week because she was so sad. I learned about where parent phone numbers are found and some tips about calling parents, such as never to use your cell phone unless you hide caller ID (one way is to hit *67). Also we have to go up to the office to make long distance phone calls which one student, who has been out for over a week, his parent has a long distance number. I haven't called a parent by myself yet but will be doing that this week hopefully to praise some students as well.

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March 02- 15, 2017

Star #1:

I'm really glad I checked in with my mentor teacher on Friday to review what the students of both classes had gone over while I was gone. This included looking at their past hw, notes and hw for that evening. This made it a little easier transitioning back into teaching on Monday.

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Star #2:

It was really nice hearing that some of the students missed me and that some of them liked the group activities. Also just getting back into the classroom was nice, and I remembered most students names still and was glad to see them again (most of them anyways).
Side note it's so much easier to remember names when I'm grading their papers.

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Wish:

My wish for this week is that I had known sooner that it was just going to be a review week and had planned more games and review activities for the students as well as being better at incorporating special days and holidays.

 

Elaboration on my wish:

To expound upon my desire to better incorporate special days, on Tuesday it was pi day so I wanted to do an activity involving pi so I brought cookies and attempted to have them find the radius of circles when given the area (to tie in taking the square root of a number and simplifying square roots) but this backfired because the students hadn't seen area of a circle in forever and needed to be reminded of radius and diameter as well as the formula for area. On to of that they still had a lot of questions for the test so we couldn't spend much time on it. I either need to find other ways to incorporate those days or better plan for leading up to those days.

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March 16-29, 2017

Star #1:

My first star this week was seeing the students coming back from break and several who had previously not been doing their homework are now actually trying. Also hearing some of the students wishing for me not to leave after 2 weeks though I think it’s because I tend to grade a little more leniently than my mentor teacher.

 

Star #2:
My second star for these past couple of weeks was getting to run the classroom while my mentor teacher was gone for the day, there was a sub there also but it was good experience also seeing all the prep work that went into having a sub take my mentor teacher’s place. Although 2nd period was just testing, first period we got to do the activity on Desmos with analyzing the person shooting a basketball. Which got several of the students more involved.

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Wish:

My wish for this week was that I had been able to do more prep work over the break as well as wished I hadn’t taken off the entire week of my spring break from the classroom.

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Elaboration on my wish:

I wasn’t able to have access to the classroom calculators over the break and Mrs. Wargo informed me that they need to be charged as well as assigned to each student and several other things we have to do before the students can use them. I also forgot 1st periods tests in the classroom over the break so I didn’t get a chance to grade those.
I also learned that when missing a week of teaching it makes it really hard to create a test that the students can do well on and it’s harder to help them to study well for it when I didn’t see how much they reviewed and what information they grasped while I was gone.

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March 30- April 05, 2017

Star #1:

My first star was helping a student that has been struggling with her hw some during my lunch break. She came specifically looking for me to help during lunch and I found out from my mentor teacher that she came looking on a day I wasn’t there also (cause UF class) and just getting to connect with her and some of the other students have made my week.

 

Star #2:

My second star actually happen today in 2nd period, when yesterday I had to have several students be called out for being disrespectful and rude. After talking to them after class and asking them to listen and be more respectful I was told by several people I talked with afterwards that I should have just written them up for being disrespectful but today the ones that showed up in class were much more respectful (still not perfect mind you). I don’t know if it was because of grades coming out today or they actually were respecting me more but I enjoyed not having to give any referrals today.

 

Wish:

My wish involved the end of the 9-weeks and grading. I wish I had kept better on top of the grading throughout the semester.

 

Elaboration on my wish:

To expound on my wish, I was doing well at the beginning of the semester grading things fairly quickly but as the semester continued and I have had to try to grade some poorly taken tests, I haven’t done as well keeping up with the grades. The end of the 9-weeks was this past week (the weekend I was helping with a youth retreat and gone all weekend) and grades were due yesterday. So I learned really quickly how to grade with generosity and adjust grades in the gradebook as well as curving a test and quite a few other tricks for handling grades at the end of a semester. Also how to respond to students and encourage them as they are worried (or in some cases not worried) about their grades. Another trick I learned from my mentor teacher for students that were very close to the grade they wanted but just not there yet. Mrs. Wargo has a peer teacher that allows students to borrow from the future 9 weeks’ grades. So if they think they will do fine in the next semester they take some of their points from there for this semester and kinda start with negative points for the next one which has supposedly motivated students to do better that next semester because they know they have to make up what they have lost.

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April 6-12, 2017

Star #1:

Getting to talk to my mentor teacher about applying for school districts & meeting peer teachers and learning about new equipment. Beginning to observe other teachers. Rate my school website. I went to the job fair Saturday.

 

Star #2:
Working with a trouble-maker student (Tasses) with homework and graphing and actually getting him to focus was great. I learned a lot about grading papers and having students come up with papers after the grading period was over. And it was really cool how excited the students got when I came and visited them on Tuesday before observing other students.

 

Wish:
My wish this week was that going to the computer lab had been better and more productive than it was. Because Mrs. Wargo can’t be consistent in going there was a loss of attention/structure, because everyone is doing testing and practicing for testing all the boards were up blocking views so students couldn’t see the front board hardly at all and I couldn’t see the students either. Also students were running late because they forgot we were in the lab, Mr.s Wargo tries to reward those on time with a hw passes they can use.

 

Elaboration on my wish:

I would like to expound a bit on talking with my mentor teacher and the job fair. Elizabeth and I drove over to the job fair together on Saturday and I learned so much. At the Wednesday job fair I had actually gotten a chance to be interviewed by Brevard county who asked me to check back in with them after I graduated. Because of the Wednesday job fair I was much more prepared for the Saturday job fair but still was a little overwhelmed by all the schools but I talked with all the middle and high schools and gave a lot of resumes out and found out which ones were looking for math teachers and where to check over the summer in case something comes up. Lincoln Middle school was looking for a young energetic new math teacher so I might do some more research into that. I also got a lot of wisdom from my mentor teacher about Brevard county (she worked there for a bit) and Alachua county and some things to look for as I am looking for a job. Like knowing the principle and vice principle and if I get along with them as well as pay and housing costs.