The Beginning!

Sorry about the long hiatus from my blog... this summer has been restful, and the beginning of this semester quite the opposite! I had the opportunity to travel with my family to Britain/Scotland this summer. Travelling is something I really enjoy, it's always exciting to visit a new country and experience their food, culture, etc.

My experiences in the classroom the first 2 days have been interesting. My mentor teacher has 1 regular, 2 honors, and 2 AP Biology classes. She's been great! I was lucky to have my first day in the placement coincide with the first day of the school year. I really didn't know what to expect that first day though. It went relatively well - we went over the syllabus, I introduced myself (albeit a bit awkwardly), we played an icebreaker in which I was included, and then repeated the process 5 times. The second day (yesterday) went better than I had expected. The regular/honors classes are working on latin roots : prefixes and suffixes in order to gain a better understanding of science vocabulary. The regular class was instantly comfortable asking me for help on the worksheet that they were working on, and one student even told me he had missed me on Wednesday! :) The honors students were much more independent, and required little of my help so I mostly observed the class during that time. And the AP class, is being quizzed pretty much the whole week on material they were assigned over the summer.

I think that the AP class will be the most challenging for me to become involved with. 90% of the students in AP have had my mentor before and she is already very comfortable and familiar with working with them, what their styles and needs are. In addition to stepping into a classroom where the routine is already very much set, the AP students are so independent. I'll have to see how the class progresses as quizzes evolve more into lecture in the coming week.

Something I decided on yesterday night after our field instructors talked with us, is that I'm going to ask my mentor to push me out of my comfort zone. Because my natural inclination is to be a little shy, I think that a little nudge would really help me a long way. I don't necessarily want to be pushed into teaching a full class, but taking over part of a class (soon) I think would be great for me to establish my presence in the classroom, get over some of my nerves, and get a feel for teaching these students. Well, here's to a great school year!