Wednesday and Thursday all in one

Traditional education is one that is based on church doctrine.  If it feels as if your teaching your lesson from a pulpit, it's probably only reaching the already faithful.

Wednesday
1- Hall Duty...it's really in these off times - lunch, hall duty, prep - where I think I learn more than observing.
Plus, I get all the juicy gossip!
2- Mr. Kalos modeled the lesson for me.
3- My Lesson - My teaching continues to lack clarity.  I accidentally stood in front of H.'s interrupter, so I really lost her on this one.  At one point in the end of the lesson, she asked me to reiterate a point for her understanding.  Since I think she is a bright student, I only clarified via oral instructions.  This was a mistake.  Duh!  She's an extremely visual learner.  But, since I had a class full of 25 kids I was thinking of their needs.  Reiterating instructions would have been helpful to everyone in the class.  Again, I started class with a higher degree of enthusiasm and participation than I ended it.  I feel as if I'm getting a better grasp on classroom management.  It helped a lot that I wasn't reading notes during classroom instruction, and was able to better assist students during instructional time.  CLARITY IS A GOAL = prep + practicing + listening to students
4-Yearbook, 5/6, Lunch, 7/8, 9/10

Thursday
I spent today mainly with the most experienced member of the English Dept, Mrs. Whitmer, interspliced with more Mrs. Wenger (talk about GREAT CLARITY and ORGANIZATION) and Mrs. Feinstein.
1- Mrs. Whitmer is the very epitome of traditional.  As a student, this class would have really boosted my self-confidence because it requires mainly simple question and answer, drills, etc.  The students are being read aloud a book via tape (ha tape) from 1994, which I think holds little relevance for them.  However, I gotta say her classes are extremely well managed.  Some of Jim and I's students are in here and they perform much better than our class.  I wonder why this is...It must be more than degree of difficulty.
Like I said, Mrs. Wenger's classes are a model of clarity and organization.  She is no bs.  She seems really intelligent and on point.  She would be a great person to think about having read over my resume when it comes time for that moment.
Mrs. Feinstein is an extraordinary reading specialist.  Despite the level of her students (really low), she is able to grasp their attention and even get a lot of accomplished.  She uses color coding, visualizing words, articles kids might actually care about, and as a sidebar, she is one of the only teachers that invited me to be a part of her class (and I really appreciate this since it gets amazingly boring to sit back and observe all day). 

Despite the 6 am rising hours, I'm still having a great time!!!