Winding down

It is hard to believe that the semester is starting to wind down already!  My final observation is on Monday and then I start to phase out of teaching my classes.  Where did the time go?  The one thing I am excited for this week is to go observe in other classroom other than my own.  It's going to be nice just to see some other things that teachers do that can be helpful in the future.  The one observation that I am most excited for (if we can get it worked out) is going to Culler and seeing how they use one-to-one in their classroom.  I have a very little idea of how one works, and my future classroom is going to that way.  Looks like I may have to take a lot of notes while I am there.  I'm also excited to go observe in some block classes at Southeast.  In my practicums and student teaching, I've just been in either a regular or diff classroom.  This opportunity will be nice just to get a little experience in a class like that just in case I were to teach one in the future.  

Professional Developement

I think that the one thing that I need to work on would definitely be my classroom management.  The one thing I need to do in order to be better at this is to follow through with my disciplining.  I usually give the student a warning and the next time that they talk they will get a detention.  The first warning usually quiets them for the rest of the period.  There have been some times where the student has talked and I haven't given any discipline for it.  I can definitely tell that that has had an effect on my classroom after that.  My warnings aren't carrying anymore weight and the kids.  They'll just keep talking.  I have given a couple of detentions but that hasn't quite worked either though.  So in the future I need to be more consistent with my disciplining and carry out on the punishments.  If classroom isn't where I want it to be, I need to be a more assertive and get it where I want it to be.

Another area I need to work on is the diversity of the ways I teach my lessons.  Right now I usually have just one way of explaining things to my students.  If a student doesn't really get it right away, I have have a hard time of trying to explain it in a different way.  I do think that this will just come with more time teaching and experience.  Another thing that I can do to get better at this also is to do a little research on the topic before I start teaching it.  This could get a couple more ideas in my head for that topic so that all the students can learn from the lesson.