Eric Kruger - Student teaching week 15

I am closing in on my final week of student teaching and it is surreal to say the least. This has been such a quick 16 weeks that I do not even know where it went to. Over this past week, the cooperating teacher has started to work back into the lessons and we have been co-teaching throughout the week. It has been weird to not be in full control of the class anymore as I pretty much have taught all of the classes since week 2 of my first placement. We are transitioning into games and full soccer games, so we are making sure that the students have a full grasp of the skills needed to play the games (IL 19.C.2b). We want to make sure that the students are not just wildly kicking the ball and have some stratigy behind their methods. Along with this, we want to make sure the students are staying safe ( IL 21.A.2b) as with soccer, many students may be looking and the ball and not where they are going. Also, with the nature of soccer, students will be accidentally getting kicked with another student may be going after a ball. Over the next week, I want to make sure that there is a smooth transition of my cooperating teacher taking back over full time, so I want to assist him in anyway I can.

Eric Kruger - Student Teaching Week 13

This week has been an interesting one. In a handful of my classes I have had to deal with students that have been misbehaving and not paying attention. This has been a test to me and my classroom management as some of the classes where out of control. Along with this, I have to test my discipline policy as it had to be something that would stick with the students.I made several students sit out of the activities that we were doing ( IL 21.A.1a) as the students had to be held responsible for their actions during the classes. Along with this, we transitioned into a soccer unit. Some of the students have no experience with the sport, while others play competitively with teams outside of school. Making sure to find activities that were appropriate for all learners was something that I put into place as well as having the more experienced students work with the less experienced players (IL 21.B.1a). My focus over the next week is going to be making sure that the students are having a smooth transition from the skills element of the unit to the live game play of the unit.

Eric Kruger - Week 12 Student teaching

This week has been an interesting one. We have been finishing up our fitness gram testing, and the final test is one that the students hate, the pacer. The fitness testing was only done for the 3rd through 5th graders, so they are a bit older and know what to expect. This was testing their cardiovascular endurance as we talked about how that is important to their daily life (19.A.2b).  To motivate the students and show that anyone could do it, I ran the pacer with all three classes that day. I wanted to motive the students and help push them a bit farther when they were getting ready to quit. Most of the kids did great throughout the day, but we had a few that did not push themselves at all and just wanted to be done with the test as soon as they could. We talked to these students about their effort after and talked about how effort carries over into everything. Throughout the test, we also talked about how staying physically fit is very important to keeping a healthy lifestyle (20.A.2b). Overall, we were impressed on the level of effort as a whole group as we had 7 students run 200 laps on the pacer. Next week, I want to keep refining my classroom management skills and continue to keep good organization throughout the lessons.

Eric Kruger - Student Teaching Week 11

As the second week comes to a close in my elementary placement, I am finding more and more things that are vastly different from the high school setting. I am finding that you must really spell out the every direction and every step for these students to be able to really grasp what they have to do (21.A.1a).  Along with this, classroom management is something that I really have to be on top of. I have improved from last week on this, but there is still room for growth to be able to control the class. The other big thing that I have to keep an eye on is keeping the gym safe (19.C.1a). While I have tired to make sure that I minimize any risk that might be around, the students can still find almost anything that that can get hurt on or with.
One thing that I feel I am doing a good job with is keeping the students active and having very little down time. I work on trying to keep the students in the activities as much as possible, especially the younger grades, as instruction can become tedious to them and you can lose their attention very fast. Over the next 5 weeks that I am here, I know I am going to grow and improve as a teacher and definitely take away a better grasp of classroom management.

Eric Kruger - Student teaching Week 10

Well, this is much more of a change than I expected. My first week of grade school student teaching has been a whirlwind. I can tell already that I am going to have a lot more fun with the kids during this placement, but much more exhausted at the end of the day. In my high school placement, I had 5 total classes with a plan period, lunch, advisory, and homeroom duty. Here, I have 8 total classes throughout the day with plan period/lunch at the same time, lunchroom duty, recess duty, as well as bus duty. I am much more on my feet throughout the day and moving much more. The kids have been very receptive to me and it looks like it is going to be a smooth transition to when I take over after spring break, That will give me five weeks of teaching these classes. Make sure that the kids are paying attention and making sure that you are keeping them attentive is going to be the biggest struggle here. The other thing with this is that you can keep them going by challenging them much better than you could with the high schoolers. With the younger students, making sure that they have enough space and they know what is around them is something to almost handhold with (19.B.1a). One thing that my cooperating teacher has done a great job on is teaching the students about their heart rate and what exercises get it up (20.B.1a). Next week, I am going to start working myself into the lessons and we are going to adopt a cooperating teaching method. My challenge is going to be finding my place correctly over the next week. Overall, I can tell my stay here is going to be an enjoyable one.

Eric Kruger - Student teaching Week 9

This is a bit of a bittersweet week as it is my last one at my high school placement. While I am a step closer to the end of student teaching and closer to getting my license, I am leaving a place that I have grown very accustomed to and have grown comfortable at. The teachers that I work next to each day have been more than accommodating and I have gained something from each one that I interacted with over these past nine weeks. I can easily tell that getting into the teaching profession was the correct choice for me as each day that I come to school is not a choir, but something that I enjoy and look forward to each day. I have learned many things from better classroom management to finding ways to incorporate more critical thinking into the physical education classroom (24.C.4a). Moving from high school to grade school is going to be a major shift that I will have to adjust to accordingly. I have become used to working with high school students, so moving to pre-k to 5th grade is going to be more focused on classroom management. One of the things that I want to focus on more once I gain a teaching job is using a week to show the students why it is important tp be physically fit and how it affects your body (23.A.4a). Needless to say, I hope that one day I am able to come back to this school in a working position as I would be thrilled to be part of this community. 

Eric Kruger - Student Teaching Week 8

During this week, we have been closing up on our first aid unit and watching the first aid video (22.A.4c). This has been a change of pace as we have been in a classroom and not doing any physical activity. The students have become visibly anxious and do not want to be in this unit anymore. I made sure to remind them that this is important material and that one day this may come in handy for them as you never know what type of situation may come up. I used some personal experiences with some subjects that were presented in the video as well as asked the students if they had anyone in their family that had suffered from specific topics that had been brought up. This seemed to hit home for them a bit more and help refocus the students for the rest of the unit.  Along with this, it prompted the students to open up a bit more and start to have a bit more discussion pertaining to the content matter. When talking about what to do in a heart attack situation, we started the conversation on your overall health and how it contributes to something like a heart attack (23.B.4a). I want to challenge myself to have more in depth conversation within class, even in normal physical education units. The students seem to get more out of the content and it is able to resonate with them better when you are able to have those type of discussions.

Eric Kruger - Student Teaching Week 7

As I am getting closer to the end of my stay here, I am becoming increasingly more comfortable at the school and with the students. One of the big things that stuck out this week was one student that had not been participating in class much at all. In P.E., the vast majority of the points you gain and grade is from participation. We are currently in a floor hockey unit, which calls for the students to move up and down the floor throughout the game while either playing on offense or defense. This really falls under being psychically active every day (19.A.4b). I spoke with the class before the unit started and addressed on hoe this is just another creative way to get your daily physical exercise in. At the end of the two week grading period, the student saw that his grade was suffering and spoke to me about it. I let him know that he actually had to be moving in the game and not just hitting the puck if it came into his 3 foot radius. I told him that if he starts doing that he will be able to pull his grade back up, Needless to say, the next day he did the same thing as usual. This seems to be a challenge that I need to undertake. Finding ways to let students know about how important physical activity is on their health (20.A.4a) and find ways to motivate the students that do not want to be active.

Eric Kruger - Student Teaching Week 6

During this week, I was able to have the head of the P.E. department observe me during one of my classes. The class that she observed is the class that I would consider my trouble class. The students in this class to not work well and will put minimum effort into the games and drills. This was deliberate on my part as I wanted her feedback on how I could address these issues, even if it meant that I was hit for points on the observation. After the class I spoke with her and she did indeed tell me that it was a rough class and lesson. I told her too that I knew it would be and that I wanted her to see this class for that exact reason so I would be able to improve myself and find was to break through to a class of this nature.
Another hurdle that I have faces over the past week was a student in my swim unit. Bring that we are required to have a certified swim instructor teach the lessons, I am tasked with taking the non-swimming students the the fitness center for their daily activity. We have a student that has refused to get in the pool or participate in the fitness center as well. I had come to find out that he has and IEP that is behavioral based. I was able to talk with his case manager and find ways to work around this. We have since made up a specific program for him that seems to be working well (20.C.4d).
One thing that I want to make sure to get across to the swimming class is the effect that it has on them throughout the day and why they should be doing it (20.A.4a). Being that swimming is a unit that most high schoolers do not want to participate, it is going to be important for them to see the benefit of the unit and what it can do for them in the long run.

Eric Kruger - Student Teaching week 5

This week I had something happen that was a first to me. At our school, we have to post grades every two weeks. I have a student in one of my freshman P.E. classes that did not dress for class 3 times during the two week grading period. With the no dress policy here, he would automatically get a 50% off his grade. I had to pull him aside and tell him what the situation was and that he needs to turn things around if he wants to pass the class. I also called home and emailed the family, with no response. I am hoping that he does start to come around and start to raise his grade because he is an athlete and he will be ineligible if his grade continues this way.
With the new unit that we are in (floor hockey) this gives a new opportunity to to work on different standards. Being that there is going to be a lot of hand eye coordination as well as puck handling, finding ways to put together movement patters to control the stick and puck is going to be vital (19.B.4b).  Along with this, it is going to be, important to be safe with the stick and puck to make sure that the students are not raising the head of the stick too high and that they are not lifting the puck into the air (19.C.4a).
One things that I want to make sure that I am focusing on over the next few weeks is to change my warm up for the classes and make it more dynamic. I want to find ways to get the students more involved in the warm up and more active. It is going to be important to find ways to incorporate the skills of the unit unto the warm up so that they can develop the skills better for the unit.

Eric Kruger - Student Teaching Week 4

This was a difficult week to really talk about. With the weather and how cold it was, my school has two late starts, and two days off. On the days that are late starts, our periods are naturally shortened and it makes it very difficult to be able to set up our full, or even actually lessons for the day. For all of my classes, it is required that either we set up equipment, or classes before us set up the equipment to use for the day. With not much time on our hands, all of the P.E. classes elected to forgo setting up the equipment and just alibiing for the day. In all of my freshman P.E. classes (3), we either played danish long ball, or combined with another class and played a large game of kickball. In my strength and conditioning class, it was pretty much up to the students on what they wanted to do for the day as we would not have enough time to be able to get through our assigned workouts for the day. With this as well, during today on the late start, it was a unique situation as the school was just coming back from 2 days off and would be heading into the weekend the next day. Needless to say, most students were already checked out the moment they walked in the doors today.
It is hard to trying to find standards to attach to this week due to its nature and the circumstances. It did help me understand and work with adaptation when situations change and the lesson plan has to go out the window for that day. Next week, we are starting new units, so I want to make sure that I am able to set a good understanding of the units upfront and make sure that the students feel comfortable heading into them.

Eric Kruger - Student Teaching Week 3

This week was an interesting one in the fact that the majority of the week we had to ad lib most of our lessons. While two of the days we were able to run our normal lessons on badminton and pillo polo, the other three days there were activities going on through the school and we were pushed out of our activity areas by them. In these days, we had to throw together activities for our classes. During my first period, I had to put together a dutch long ball game. It went well and the students were able to stay active throughout. During my 4th period class, we joined one of the other classes and had a fitness unit put together for these days. The students would rotate through stations that consisted of lower ab work, jump rope, jogging, and upper ab work. This specifically fits into 19.A.4b with the students staying physical active and using repetitive motions.  With the last class, we also joined with another class to play a big kickball game. This was a bit more of a slower pace as there was not as much movement going on by the students and we had to push a bit more to make sure the students were participating.
The one thing that I would like to try to work on my is having the students develop more of a strategy in pillo polo as there is not much passing right now and just wild hitting the ball. Talking the the students and having them do some passing drills down the court will hopefully help this out. This also fits into 19.C.4b.

Eric Kruger - Student Teaching week 2

From the outset of my student teaching, this week was going to be a big week. Week 2 is when I was going to start to take over classes from my cooperating teachers. I was very excited to take control of the courses and make them my own. My one cooperating teacher made a good point with taking the classes over early on. With Me assuming the classes early on, the students will see me as the teacher from the beginning and we will not have to transfer the roles. So far, the strategy has seemed to pay off. The students in my classes have responded well to me as the teacher and listen well. The classes that seem to be going the best are my freshman classes. I feel that the freshman are still new to the high school scene and are still trying to not cause trouble. My strength class that consists of juniors and seniors are the ones that I seem to have to push more. Being that they have been there for over 3 years, it seems that these students feel that they have a bit more of a run of the place and they do not have to do as much work.
One other things that happened this wee is I was able to sit down with the department chair to be able to pick her brain and get an idea on how she views P.E.'s direct today. I was also able to find out who she thinks is her strong teachers so I will be able to go to them and find out what their philosophies are and make sure that I can find as many views as possible. I was able to tell her my ideas about starting a cycling class in a school as well as evolving the strength program so that they student would be able to put their own workout programs together by the end of the semester.
Some of my goals moving forward in the next few weeks are going to be finding ways to work technology more into my lessons as well and find a way to differentiate my lessons from the normal lessons that are being taught by the teachers that are there now. In the education world, you have to find a way to stand out and make your own mark, and I want to find a way to do that sooner than later.

Student Teaching Week #1

My First week of student teaching has been an exciting yet exhausting experience. I am placed at an elementary school with my cooperating teacher being the only Physical Education teacher in the school. This week we began a two-week basketball unit. Tuesday, we began developing dribbling and ball handling skills. On Wednesday we continued to improve upon said skills through physical activity by the name of “Dribbling for Treasure.” On Thursday we began developing the students’ cognitive and psychomotor knowledge of the chest, bounce, and overhead passes. Friday was a “Fun Friday” lesson for the students, which we allowed the students to participate in a shooting activity, “Around the World.” During the lesson, I used this time to pre-assess my students on their psychomotor ability to perform the jump shot, set shot, and layup, which will be implemented into next week’s lesson plans.

            Having prior knowledge of the cooperating teacher and the students of the school while working as a substitute in the past, the cooperating teacher feels comfortable with me as an educator in her classroom and, as such, has already incorporated me into the lead teaching role as of the 9:40 AM class, Wednesday. To date, I have already led 25 classes, and have implemented one of my own lesson plans (developing proper chest, bounce, and overhead pass technique,) themed around the cooperating teacher’s style while following two of the cooperating teacher’s lesson plans. The cooperating teacher has been extremely valuable, assessing my teaching ability while in her office, and offering me various types of feedback for improvement in my teaching.

            The first full day of teaching was rather nerve-wracking. I lost a sense of time in my first class, being five minutes late, and the homeroom teacher had to come in to let me know. Every class after that was out on time, however, I did not leave time for reflection and closure. According to my corresponding teacher, reflection is the most important activity in a daily lesson. It allows the teacher to gauge the student level of knowledge of the content, allow the students to unwind, and create a complete feeling of inclusion within the student/teacher relationship.

            Students have been respectful, with a willingness to follow direction and have demonstrated a cognitive and psychological understanding of the knowledge being asserted within the lesson by myself. I have been noticing that, through the incorporation of constant review and reflection throughout and at the end of each lesson (a portion of the class my cooperating teacher has specifically pointed out as necessary to knowledge retainment and a part of the Danielson model her curriculum is designed around) the majority of students are demonstrating apparent high percentages of knowledge retainment through formative assessments. Our goal for next week is to achieve a 28-point increase in average on between the basketball pre-test taken last Monday, and the post-test to be taken next Thursday.

            I have come to notice the style in which I wish to teach in heavily resembles that of my cooperating teacher, which has made working with her extremely insightful and pleasurable. Each lesson, the teacher incorporates either content-specific vocabulary terms (word wall), Heath related information such as knowledge in the bodies systems, and ways to improve physical health, and nutrition information to aid the students is making proper nutritional choices. Before, this is something I had never thought of incorporating into an elementary setting. However, seeing the effects the information has on the students, I fully expect to incorporate into my own teaching. For example, on Thursday I spoke to the students on the importance of water and its effect on the human body. This morning, I had five new students with water bottles in the classroom, with three of them coming to me to explain their choice was based on the three minutes I committed to water importance.

The cooperating teacher holds a strong belief that students should be self-sufficient when it comes to their ability to take care of themselves and has created an environment which strongly encourages students to learn within themselves. Her warm-up activity centers are completely student-centered, where the small groups work as a team completing partner based physical activities.

As stated before, with the oncoming summative assessment of student knowledge in basketball coming next Thursday, I am hoping to learn that my ability to lead a classroom and exchange the knowledge necessary to warrant student success on the assessment is noticeable. My cooperating teacher has stated that the two 1^st grade classes are demonstrating proficient growth in the psychomotor abilities at the level of which she would aspire, and I hope the cognitive abilities are just as noticeable in the summative. Through next week, my goals are to continue to establish the student/teacher connection between the students and myself and establish the expectations I hold to the students as well as continue to withhold the cooperating teacher’s expectations as well. I also plan on implementing at least to more of my own lesson plans into the unit and hope to discover that the plans I wish to create for my future students are as engaging and educational as the lessons currently being used by my cooperating teacher.

For Friday’s activity, “Around the World,” in accordance with IPTS section 3,  (3D - understands when and how to adjust plans based on outcome data, as well as student needs, goals, and responses,) in order to establish an accurate opportunity to children of lesser physical strength in the younger grades (1-2), playground balls of a lighter weight and hula hoops hung from the backboard in addition to the regulation sized rims and basketballs were readily available to allow students to perform the lesson at a successful rate of completion as those with proficient to exceptional strength for said age group. This also allowed me to accurately assess students’ ability to identify the key component of basketball of accuracy.

 Throughout the duration of all classes, in accordance IPTS standard 4, learning environment, classroom management is evident with my use of words, phrases, and maneuvers throughout the lesson that promotes safety and allows students positivity without facing hazardous situations. For example, when I blow the whistle students are to place the basketball between their feet. When the whistle is blown, I always point out the first student I see listening to direction and reward them by commending them to the class and giving a fist bump. This gesture, I have noticed, has become a game to the students. Students are placing the ball between their feet at the sight of the whistle to be the first one to be seen following directions. I am constantly rewarding positive behavior as opposed to exposing negative behavior.

My goals for this week are to incorporate more technology in the classroom with the possibility of video-based examples, and electronic gifs to play during practice activities to visually aid in education, and better establish a comfortability in time management within my classroom.

Week 1 of student teaching

This has been an interesting and exciting week starting my student teaching experience. While getting to know all of the new faces and learning about the procedures of Andrew High School has been fast and fun, is has been a slow week as far as classes go. Within physical education, the first week of a semester is usually slow paced. This week we have introduces ourselves and talked about the overview of the class on day one. On day two, the students found their gym lockers, bought uniforms, as well as locks. During the third day, we walked through the syllabus and talked about expectations of the students for the class. Finally on Friday, the students dressed out for the first time and we had an active day where the students just had to stay active for the whole period either playing basketball, walking, or anything else athletic based. It was unique to see that now it is required to have a CPR unit (which we will have as our third unit) as one of IPTS within physical education (15-6). This was something that was not active during my high school career
One class that I am part of is an adaptive physical education class where we are working with special education students from Andrews, as well as other schools. I can already tell that this is going to be the class I enjoy the most. Working with these students just puts a smile on your face and it is hard to have a bad day after leaving that class. They enjoy the smallest things and appreciate anything you do for them. Watching and helping the students in the adaptive class while they were working with their tutors seeing how many hits they could get in a badminton unit was amazing. No matter if they hit is once, or twenty times, the students were all smiles and excited to try again.
Outside of the classes, I can already tell that I am going to have a bit of an issue with navigating the P.E. teachers. There are many of the male teachers that are against more instruction and evaluations through tests or quizzes, while there is another female P.E. teacher that goes to the other spectrum with this. Talking with one of the male P.E. teachers, I have found out that the department chairperson wants more of diving into why we are doing the activities and not as much of relying on sole physical activity. Seems like this would fit into the IPTS physical education standard 20.A.4a where it talking about interpreting the effects of physical activity on the students' health and fitness related levels.  I am going to have to find a nice middle ground to appeal to the department chair so I hopefully gain a job here after I complete my student teaching.
Regardless of everything, these next 15 weeks are going to be exciting, interesting, and enlightening. For this next week, my main goal is to establish a good report with the students as I will be taking the classes over starting Monday. I want to make sure they view me as the teacher and make sure that I execute the lessons as close to the letter of the Andrew unit plans as possible. Overall, while I am here I plan to meet as many new people as I can, pick as many brains that I can, and make sure that I am coming out a much better and more prepared teacher than I was going in.