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.