The first week!

Well, I made it through my first week of Student Teaching II at an elementary school about 8 minutes from our house (very convenient!) and so far, it is proving to be the exact opposite of my experience at the other school. My cooperating teacher at this school is an experienced elementary teacher with over 20 years of teaching under her belt. She also cares about her job and that was evident to me this week when I observed her teaching.

First, she is so organized! When I first met her, she showed me her "map" for each grade (k-5th). This map had each week of teaching planned out to teach specific music concepts to each grade for the whole year! I was so impressed. But more than impressed, I am excited to work and learn from her. So this week has been such a welcome relief from what I experienced before at the other school because I am learning that teaching can be a joy if you are organized and prepared and this current teacher is so I hope to soak up all I can from her!

Second, her classroom management and discipline in her classroom is so much better than the other teacher's system. She shows consistency in her discipline and her methods are effective! On Friday, she had me teach the 2nd and 3rd grade music classes a song and game (which ended up being about half of the class time for each period) and her critique of my teaching was very positive but also gave me a few practical things that I could work on to make my teaching even better. Again, this was opposite of the other teacher I had, who would ask me after watching me teach one of her classes, "how do you think you did?"

Next week, I will be teaching a lesson to one of my coop's kindergarten classes and also a 4th grade class.