Day 2/Department Meetings

The second day of my student teaching placement involved a meeting with my department and the head of the humanities department. I was surprised that this department also contained the foreign language teachers, however it was nice to have their input, especially because the room I am teaching in is int he foreign language wing of the school and not the social studies wing.

The meeting began with discussions on receiving professional development points when coming to meetings and the logistics of have the department meetings would be taking place. There was also discussions about PLCs and using common assessments. Different teachers stepped up to head the various PLC areas, and my supervising teacher, Mr. Carl, is taking over the U.S. History PLC. There was further discussion on using a common assessment over the semester and charting improvement. The common assessments are in place in order to show growth and get a feel for what students are understanding and what topics need to be covered again.

Next, the meetings shifted to security reminders based on lock down procedures, being present in the hallways during passing periods, and a particular bathroom where smokers like to congregate and how to combat that problem this year with locking the bathroom. Cell Phones are to be left up to the teacher's discretion and netbooks are suppose to be in class everyday as a building policy.

I volunteered to help with the Veterans Day Assembly, even though I will not be there for the actual assembly in order to get more involved. It was nice to see the difference between a school wide meeting and the closer communal meetings with the department that addresses more personal issues and goals. I think the common assessments in the PLC are a really good idea and I am interested to see how they progress and what type of advantages will come from working within a PLC.

I was then able to go to lunch with the Social Studies Department and again get to know the people I would be working with better. The last part of the day was spent organizing materials for school tomorrow and beginning to brainstorm ideas for the lessons I will be teaching when I take over the class in around two weeks.

I am pretty nervous for tomorrow event though I am not taking over total control of the class. It is my goal to be an active observer and participant in the class while I get the feel of the classroom and transition into teaching. I know I do not want to be the random student teacher who sits in the back of the class while class goes on. I am hoping to put together short presentation introducing myself to the students so that I can start to build a relationship with the classes before I begin teaching.