Meetings and the Commencement of my unit planning!

I am having a difficult time readjusting to a busy life in which many things are badgering for my attention. Currently my personal life, and my practicum are where I am most inclined to spend time and energy, and I'm finding it difficult to give focus to my class work, despite the fact that the class work is what had eminent deadlines. Along that strain, I left my notebook with my observation notes at school, which is making it a bit of a challenge to write a thoroughly thought through reflection for the week.

One thing that is fresh in my mind is the (two actually) meetings I had on Friday. I normally don't come into school on Fridays, and had come specially for a meeting about the new curriculum that I will be teaching from. It also so happens that there was an intervention type meeting for a student in my class who has been having trouble. I sat in on that and found it enlightening to say the least. I know that I personally find that I am most dreading ( about teaching) the interaction with parents. I'm afraid I won't gracefully put up with parents who think their children are God's gift to the entire world (not just them.) Or the parents who expect me, as a teacher of a class of thirty, to change my entire teaching style/structure/whatever in order to suit their student. However, the parents of this particular kid were great. Without getting angry or placing blame on the student, they acknowledged that he had issues and challanges. They made a point of saying that they didn't expect teachers to change the way they taught, but were seeing help from the school to make the transition from elementary school to high school a bit easier on their child. The meeting was really positive, there was praise for the student as well as discussion of his problems, and after discussion from/with all of his teachers, the counselor helped to create a specific plan for how improvement could be made. I was surprised (though I suppose I shouldn't be) how much behind the scenes decision making there can be. For instance this student has some interpersonal issues in some classes, but not in others. So he is creating a list of those students he wants to sit by, and can work well with, and those students he really doesn't want to sit near, so that the teachers can arrange him in a group situation in which he can be successful. I would never have thought of straight up asking the student who he wanted to sit with. That seems so... unfair. But if this student is able to work positively in that group, then that will allow the other students to work without the disruption he was previously causing.

After that meeting, we had out curriculum meeting and I got my first taste of the headache that teachers have to go through to match their curriculum up. We have a new set of 'focal points' that we have to hit, in a certain order. And a district mandated schedule for how long should be spent on each focal point, and what your advanced and lower group should be doing, and when you should be working with both groups together etc. It was such a headache. Not only that, but the text book we are using doesn't match up with the state standards. Things are grouped differently, there are sub-chapters on things we don't need to cover. It was mind-boggling, and I can't say enough how grateful I am to have these two veteran teacher to work with on writing my unit plan. I especially appreciate how both of these teachers (Mrs. Keener, and Mr. Smith) treat me as a peer, a peer with less experience, but they don't talk down to me, or try and cut me out of things. They go out of their way to include me in all relevant conversations so that I get a true experience.We have a real pedagogical challenge in that our classes are heterogeneous, but we are expected to teach differentiated lessons to the high and low students. So there will be student swapping and team teaching, it will be really important that we stay at the same speed as we move through the chapters. Part of the focal point plan is that each subject is learned to mastery, so I am going to have to be creative to find ways to continue to work on multiplying and dividing fractions without boring the students (or myself!) After an hour or so, and a long phone call to the principal, we started to get things hammered out. I now know that I will be teaching a unit on converting between fractions and decimals, and then multiplying and dividing decimals. I will start my unit on Monday October 27th, and we plan for it to be four weeks long.