This week is another memorable week for me. It seems that I did plenty of listening to what the students have to say. I gave the students a project that was due friday. Part of the project was a short oral presentation of their work. Listening to what they have to say gave a deeper insight to where the students are coming from.
The most valuable information I gained this week is not just hearing what they have to say but actually listening to what they are trying to say.
The project was about their dream vacation. The whole week, I could tell that the students were very excited to talk about what they were going to share with the class. I even had one class that the majority turned in their project a day early. Well, one student decided not to share his dream vacation. He's the quite type but seems to be coming out of his shell lately. Even my coop has noticed that he's started to talk more with other students. My coop mentioned that earlier in the year, the student just sits on one spot and never talks to anyone.
I had a brief talk with the student after the class regarding his project, he stated, "we (him and his family) never do anything." I felt so bad that it took me a while to respond. I then shared the information with my coop. My coop gave me a brief background about the student and reminded me that we need to be more understanding of the students because they might be dealing with a lot more than what's on the surface.
My coop also reminded me that we, the teachers are the most constant figure in a students' life (at least for the meantime while they are in school). Students spend majority of their day with their teachers, in some cases, teachers are the only adult interaction the students get in a day. So, sometimes we need to do more than just hear what they have to say.
During the week, another student had mentioned that she does not have enough time to work on her homework because she has to work after school. I asked if she really needs to work because if it's affecting her schoolwork maybe she needs to cut down her hours at work. Later on, I overheard her state to another student that her mom takes all her paycheck.
After learning a little bit more about each student, I am starting to understand why they act the way they do. My coop has been an excellent mentor. I can see how much the students love her because she cares so much for them.
I followed a student for a day this week as part of the requirement for school. If there was something I would change this week it would be to move the observation on a week other than this week. It was PSSA week and the schedule was irregular and threw most of the students out of loop. Even I got really confused.
I had to take a sick day this week and it threw my teaching schedule off balance because I am now a day behind. If I could redo it over again, I would wish that I was not too sick to miss a day.
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Sometimes the home stories of our students really saddens our hearts as their teachers. I distributed a paper last week in class about what we need to remember as teachers to children. At any age they are truly children learning to be their own people and hoping to be loved and supported along the way. This is not exactly the words but it stated that on the average, a teenager receives only 12 minutes of attention/dialog from each parent a day. That is a really sad statistic.
ReplyDeleteAs teachers, we need to be there for every student because unfortunately and sadly, we are the only positive adult attention they receive. :(