Week Thirteen: Carl Sandburg

There are many things that happened this week during my student teaching at Carl Sandburg High School. For the past year I have kept all my documents and lessons on my HP flash drive. On Monday, I left my flash drive in the computer and it was broken by one of my students. I lost everything I have done in my senior year including the week’s lessons, assessments, flipcharts and power points.

There were some positives from this experience. I learned how to literally think on my feet in putting together my week with my students. I am so happy that I had planned ahead to know what I expected and what I wanted to teach to my students. 

This also happened to be the week that I was being observed. Since I felt like I was constantly going, I completely forgot that she was coming in so she was able to see me off guard which ended up being a great thing. Professor Powell was able to see how I will be a teacher on a daily basis because there are going to be days where I don’t have much time to put into planning.

This week I was able to do record many videos of myself teaching. I think this is the best learning experience for me. It makes a huge difference when I watch myself to see both my positives and negatives. I noticed that in one lesson that I felt like I didn’t talk at my students level and that I had to raise or lower that in some areas. As for a positive I was happy to see how comfortable I look teaching my classes.  In Standard 10 it states that “The competent teacher is a reflective practitioner who continually evaluates how choices and actions affect students, parents, and other professionals in the learning community and actively seeks opportunities to grow professionally.” I have shown this my reflections on my lessons and how I would change or keep parts of it the same. I know that by watching the videos and even just reflecting on previous lessons that it will help me to grow professionally and be the teacher my student’s deserve.

This placement has shown me how I truly want to be a special education teacher. I have heard from other majors on how they are unsure of if this is what they can do for the rest of their life but I think I could be happy waking up everyday working with students like I have at Sandburg. I cannot wait to graduate and be a full time teacher with incredible staff, aides and students.