First Week of Teaching

The Early Childhood Education program I graduated from at Dalton State’s mission was to create Caring, Collaborative, Competent, and Reflective educators.  When graduation time came, I swore I NEVER wanted to reflect upon a reflection again.  However, Dalton State’s ECE Program was successful; I naturally feel compelled to record and reflect on my first week of teaching.

Most people would view my first week as a huge success.  First and foremost, I survived along with my 23 students!  No one was physically hurt in my classroom.  There were a few hurt feelings, and unloving things said and done, but I addressed those in a very calm and professional matter, with the Christian perspective of, “Now did that decision express to your classmate that you love them?  Remember we are supposed to love God first, and then love your neighbor, and be kind to them.”  I feel that it set a positive tone for our classroom environment.

I knew all of the students names before 9:00am on Monday morning; which as any teacher knows gives you an inevitable sense of control and authority you could not have otherwise.  Saying, “kid in the red shirt, quit talking to your neighbor,” isn’t quite as effective as calling on the student by name.

We often had fun, while learning, by playing new games.  The students look forward to playing Miss Cawood vs. the Students at the end of the day, which also provides me an opportunity to verbally assess if the students learned the objectives of the day.

I decided to have a show-and-tell time with my students that provided the students an opportunity to personally relate to the thematic social studies unit we started called, “Traveling Around the World”.  Show-and-tell is a huge success, and the students look forward to it every day!  In most school settings, you would not have the opportunity to have a show-and-tell time for students to bring things they have gotten from places they have traveled in another country.  In most schools, several students have never traveled outside of the city they live in.  However, all of my students have traveled outside of the country multiple times.  Many of them have traveled to countries I have only dreamed about.  The classroom dynamics are amazing.  Not only is it a great way for the students to personally relate to our unit on continents, but I am able to get a snapshot of the students personalities and interests!  The items they choose to bring are adorable: a toy airplane from the airport in California, seashells from the beach in Dubai, a euro from Finland, a children’s song book from Switzerland, and safari animals from Kenya.  It’s wonderful! 

There were many other things I could look back on and be happy about.  However, at the end of the week, my thoughts were more focused on the things I should have done, or the things that did not go as planned, or the things that were totally unexpected.

I had the bright idea to implement Literacy Centers into the classroom.  The students have not been exposed to Literacy Centers, so this was a whole new world.  After spending the first 2 days, explicitly going over each of the centers, and what they should do while in each center, we started the literacy rotations.  It was chaos!  It was like the students had no idea what we had spent the last 2 days doing.  They looked lost, with no direction.  I was unable to be in 6 places at once, so students were coming up to me while I was with another center asking what they were supposed to be doing.  The students in the listening center could not agree on a book to listen to.  The students in the sight word center were fighting over who was going to be the person that kept the time for the flash card challenge.  I was putting out fires left and right!  And don’t even get me started on the groups’ inability to line up in order to rotate to the next center.  Kids were fighting over who was in the front of the line.  “Miss Cawood, I was here first, and so and so came and got in front of me.”  I felt as if I was going to lose my mind, and I asked myself, “What were you thinking?”

Thankfully, by Friday, the center rotations were a little better.  Now all of the groups have successfully rotated through all 6 centers.  So hopefully, on Monday, the students will at least have some idea of what they are supposed to be doing.  If not, I will have to re-evaluate!

I learned that 1^st graders have a MUCH shorter attention span than 5^th graders (the grade in which I did my student teaching).  I have to continually remind them that, “we raise our hand before speaking out,” or “how are we supposed to be sitting on the floor, that’s right, criss cross applesauce, on your bottoms,” or “are we supposed to be talking to our neighbors when someone else is talking?”  I feel like I am a broken record!  In 5^th grade, you can expect to give them one verbal warning before they have to experience the consequences of their decisions.  However, if I only gave my students one verbal warning, many of them would be on red part of the Ethiopian flag before 10:00am!

Those were a few of my frustrations.  Not to mention I forgot to turn in my 2 students’ names that would receive character awards in chapel on time.  So I had to make my own certificates just to ensure that my class would not be the only one without awards.  I also forgot to check on something for a parent, in which I told them I would check on.  Great first impression of Miss Cawood!

Haha….I can laugh about some of these things today, but last week, it was trying to say the least.  Welcome to the world of teaching!  I feel that this is just the beginning.  However, when it is all said and done, I can’t think of anything I would rather be doing!  So cheers to week one being completed, and best of luck for week two!