Entry 5

School Placement: Carlisle School

Cooperating Teacher: Mancino Craighead

Grade(s)/Subject(s) of Placement: 6-12 (Sports Medicine, AP Statistics, PE (6-12))

Date: 8/29/14

Summary of Today’s Activities:

Sports Medicine - (2nd and 4th, long periods)

Today I collected projects of most of my students, although, I also encountered a few rounds of excuses. Since I clearly stated my homework policy on day 1 and it is posted on edline at every students convenience; I showed no pity when it was assigned all week. I followed my stated protocol (10 point deduction for every day its late) and after the second missing assignment, I'll contact the parent. After projects were collected, the students were instructed to get in their groups from the previous lesson and present their findings to the class. Since they each divided up into 3 different groups, a lot of information was collected and presented, but next time I think I'll make different people present just to get them comfortable. After the presentations were finished, I try to balance out the class with factual information with a little compassion and humanitarian, so we watched a 15 min. video (E:60) on the ever so popular ALS. However, this video was made before the Ice Bucket Challenge, and it was about the diagnosis, demise, and death of a 28 year old soccer player. After the video, I didn't even have to say anything, the students wanted to take part in their own research to learn more which was really powerfully for me observe. 

AP Statistics -(6th, long period)

After I checked every ones homework (all had completed) we went over the answers. I called on different people to supply an answer and I was happy to hear that most everyone was on the same page. It took about 10 minutes to go over the answers, I really want to try to limit that to 7 minutes next class period so I can have more instructional time. Once homework Q&A was over, I jumped right into the lesson of the day - Probability and Statistical Inference. I used my combination presentation once again and got through it pretty quickly. However, it was the end of the preliminary chapter and it was time for the Case Closed Assignment (chapter review) and we didn't get to finish it in class, like originally planned. I really need to make sure I'm staying aligned with my statistics pacing guide, so I might have to take out a few bells and whistles to make sure all content is covered. 

Middle PE - (7th )

Tuesday-Friday Class. Daily exercises, but with a lot more variety of stretching. Since it was Friday, and a holiday weekend; I was emotionally and physically spent. So I just went with the feel of the class, we did more of transitional yoga for the whole class instead of physical fitness testing (which now got moved to Tuesday-Wednesday of next week). There were quite a few injured middle school athletes, so I taught them a series of stretches to keep their bodies healthy throughout their season. 

Reflection about Today’s Activities:

As a college prep school, it is hard for me to rationalize contacting the parent over missing homework assignments. It is a school policy, so of course I follow it. Another school policy of not allowing any zeros, the maximum penalty a student can receive is a 40 even if he/she chooses not to complete the assignment. I believe if we are preparing them for college, maybe we should design our classroom and our policies more towards a college standard. I've heard many professors say that incoming freshman do not have what it takes to be successful in college; ie: accountability, responsibility, time management, etc. However, I do know that Carlisle School has 100% college acceptances every year, but I'm more concerned with the following statistics: How many successfully complete college? Most students at Carlisle are self-intrinsically motivated, but what about those who need an extra push? Are we helping them by hand-holding all the way through high school? I have often pondered on this idea of college prep school but with old high/middle school policy. 

Entry 4

School Placement: Carlisle School

Cooperating Teacher: Mancino Craighead

Grade(s)/Subject(s) of Placement: 6-12

Date: 8/28/14

Summary of Today’s Activities:

 Thursday turned out to be a lot calmer than Tuesday. My planning (7:45-10:30) is starting to get easier as I establish a routine system. During this time, I planned for both Sports Medicine and AP Statistics for the next day. Most of the battle was figuring out how to use edline and making sure the students had access to it. There were a lot of internet resources our peers taught us how to use when we met for our teacher workdays at the beginning of August. I'm just now finding a little time to sort out useful and effective over the the filler systems of just trying to incorporate technology in my lesson plans. Then around 10:30, Dr. Brenner came to meet with me to catch me up from the information I missed on Tuesday's class. I was very grateful for her finding the time to help keep me in the loop as I battle all of my fall responsibilities; but I really felt like crying after she left (but I might save that for my reflection piece!). 

Upper PE - (5th, long period)

My class is starting to adjust to their new daily exercises (without complaining as much). I have to remind them time-to-time that they signed up for the class and the word physical is actually written in the course title. After they concluded their exercises, we finished up the physical fitness testing (except for the mile); Trunk Extension and Curl Ups. Since we had spent all of our PE days testing, I thought it was time to allow them to play a game that requires a lot of quick responses and decisions. The game is called Boccer and it is a combination or soccer and basketball. The students responded well to the game and I really look forward moving out of testing and more into cooperative sports! 

Middle PE - (7th)

This will be my third meeting with this specific class this week; and I'm happy to say that I actually concluded my physical fitness testing for this class too! The students all scored really well, so now it is my mission to make them improve for the post-test! 

Reflection about Today’s Activities:

My upper school physical education class consists of 9th-12 graders; 15 males, 1 female. I'm still trying to figure out the students intention of signing up for the class when they complain about physical activity in general; however, they think they should be able to play basketball everyday. Is it just in a boys nature to want to play basketball or are they too scared to play other sports and possibly not succeed? Every year, I go through the same battle of trying to explain to the students that physical education does not mean free play/basketball everyday. But I do notice that on the days they get to play, they are less defiant and respond well to commands. My thought process is leading me too, maybe they need supervised recess to just have a moment to do something they enjoy during the school day. Most people have outlets, but some need a physical one to release stress and just unload your mind (I know I do). Even though I design these lesson plans for physical education and introduce them to numerous activities, none make them more happy than basketball. I continuously tweak my lesson plans to try to draw them in every year, but it also might be that I have had majority of the same students for the past 3-4 years in such a small class setting. I'm a fan of variation, but it seems I fight my students on this every year. Maybe next year, I'll have the perfect response for when this arises. 

Entry 3

School Placement: Carlisle School

Cooperating Teacher: Mancino Craighead

Grade(s)/Subject(s) of Placement: 6-12 (Sports Medicine, AP Statistics, PE (6-12))

Date: 8/27/14

Summary of Today’s Activities:

Sports Medicine - (2nd and 4th, long periods)

Chapter 1 in Sports Medicine consists of the holistic, multidisciplinary approach to Sports Medicine and can be quite boring to the student. In order to stay in lines with our schools approach to learning, student engagement, I constructed a mini - collaborative project where the students had to research career fields in sports medicine and exercise physiology using technology. At the conclusion of the project, the students found that the price of obtaining their degree almost wasn't worth the salary (which is a whole other discussion in itself). But at the end of the lesson, each class were able to contribute to a meaningful discussion about the pros/cons of each career. At the end of class, I reminded them about their project due Friday, so I didn't assign an extra assignment.

AP Statistics -(6th, long period)

Today's lesson was focused around data and where you can find good data. I constructed the lesson around my lecture but with student driven responses. I gave every member in the class a survey to fill out, so I can use their responses as examples for the entire course. This summer, I was fortunate enough to go to AP Statistics training where I obtained many great resources and knowledge. It was here, that I learned that students can relate to the information more if it is something they are connected too. So throughout class, we used many real world examples as well as their interest survey questions to respond to specific data questions. At the end of class, I assigned a few homework problems (just enough to make them think but not get overwhelmed). 

Middle PE - (7th )

Every other Wednesday I teach opposite middle school PE classes. The normal schedule: Monday/Thursday, Tuesday/Friday with alternating Wednesdays. Today I 'm teaching the Monday-Thursday class, but I'm still focused on completing all physical fitness tests. Even during testing, the students have to complete an invigorating daily exercise routine. I try to teach them that physical activity needs to be routine, but not with the same routine. I like to mix up exercises every now and then to allow them to be diverse in their activities as they come to learn their bodies. 

Reflection about Today’s Activities:

Back to the discussion held in both of my Sports Medicine classes about trying to earn a professional degree. It was hard for me as a teacher to remain very positive about the future education of my students during this time. After doing the research, it was found that some of the careers my students were interested in and very capable of doing would cost them around $400K. This price tag is sending very mixed signals to our future members of society. These capable students that could potentially lead fields of studies that could contribute to our society are scared away because of not being able to afford it. The message now to these kids - why spend that money and live in a constant state of debt when I can do a comfortable job for a fraction of the price. There is very little motivation for our American students to want to achieve and really contribute because of our current economic condition. I'm certainly not an economist but I do understand the ripple effect and how this can trickle on down to students who may not even be born today. This conversation really stuck in my head all day since we are a college prep school; what are we preparing our students really to do? 

Entry 2

School Placement: Carlisle School

Cooperating Teacher: Mancino Craighead

Grade(s)/Subject(s) of Placement: 6-12

Date: 8/26/14

Summary of Today’s Activities:

Tuesdays and Thursdays are more of my planning days than anything since my responsibilities of teaching do not start until 11:30 and the only classes I teach are upper school PE and middle school PE.    However, since we have an away volleyball game in Roanoke and required to depart from school early, I have to divide my time into planning and getting ready for the game today. A basic summary of my time from 7:45 am to 11:30 am includes: preparing presentations for Sports Medicine and AP Statistics, running paper copies needed for classes, uploading all information onto edline for the next days class, responding to e-mails, making sure all girls are in representative dress for the game and have uniforms to change into, confirming our transportation schedule, printing rosters/line-up cards, assigning girls to different jobs for the game (book, stats, etc.), responding to parents' texts about the game, and figuring out what I'm going to do since my JV coach decided she was not going to the game (which left me by myself for both JV and Varsity teams). Then it was time for my PE class to start.

Since I had already received the e-mail about my students having to take school pictures today right in the middle of class. I thought it was best that we didn't participate in physical activity today, instead we talked about current events in the sporting world. The rest of the class was consumed of picture day shenanigans. 

Middle school PE is always a blast at the end of the day, but this is a different group than I had yesterday. So once again, it was physical fitness day which was followed by mounds of complaining. 

Reflection about Today’s Activities:

Despite how organized and prepared I am for certain events, I tend to find myself having to work around unforeseen obstacles. These obstacles turn into mounds of anxiety, but I have no choice but to work through it with a smile. I will not let my students or athletes see anything but positivity and optimism since I have learned they feed off of me. I often feel overwhelmed with the pressure of being a good teacher and responding to the schools demands of being a customer service school, single handedly building the volleyball program the past 6 years with very little support from the school/parents, being a responsive wife that has responsibilities around the house/farm, and trying to finish my masters degree while juggling all of the above. I know this was supposed to be a reflection about today's activities, but my thoughts took over and it felt better writing about it than actually letting it effect me. I've learned that being a teacher/coach/wife/student means that you have mastered the art of multi-tasking and not everything is going to go according to plan. I've accepted that I will not always get it right, but trying to improve means more than failing. 

Entry 1

School Placement: Carlisle School

Cooperating Teacher: Mancino Craighead

Grade(s)/Subject(s) of Placement: 6-12

Date: 8/25/14

Summary of Today’s Activities:

 Today is our first Monday back to school and also our first day of running a normal schedule. I teach all of my class periods today, but for only 45 minutes each. The first class I encounter is Sports Medicine; the class consists mostly of 9th graders along with 1 junior and 1 senior. Today I went over their blog post and homework that was assigned on Friday. Most kids had it already completed, but some experienced a few edline problems which didn't allow them to view their homework. Since it was considered a short period, I spend most of my time teaching my students how to respond to a blog post through the Internet source on the schools web page. The other half of class was dedicated to assigning a project that will be due on Friday. It was very important for me to stress to the class about the weekly blogs and projects that will be assigned, so they could get used to getting into a routine and complete it to my standards. The next class I teach it also Sports Medicine, but that specific class is larger and more diverse through the grades. It's very fortunate to teach the same class back-to-back so lesson planning isn't so complicated. 

After I teach two sections of Sports Medicine (2nd & 4th), I continue on with 5th period, Physical Education (Grades 9-12). Last week, the class did a series of icebreakers and getting to know each other activities, so they weren't too excited to jump right into physical fitness. The new presidential fitness challenge differs from the known physical fitness tests, so I tested the students in the following exercises today: shoulder stretch, push-ups, and trunk extension. Since it was testing day, I allowed the students to cut back on half of their daily exercises in order to get the best test results. 

Last week I presented two different presentations on the same material in my AP Statistics class because of one big reason: half of my class is Chinese and the other half is American. AP Statistics to most people would be considered a math class, but in reality it is a writing/interpreting class. After taking a class vote, it was clear that the Asian students preferred the presentation with the simple English terminology and the Americans liked the demonstration of the words through examples. So over the weekend, I spent a great deal of time combining both presentations so both of my student population could benefit from the class. So today, I actually presented my combined project and the students loved it. However, on the flip side of that, I just created a lot more work for myself and I'm already drowning in work. But at the end of the day, I would do anything for my students and especially so they can learn. The prepared lesson also incorporated a lot of student engagement activities where they each get a little mini assignment and then try to place all of their pieces to assemble the entire answer to a problem. At the end of class, I assigned them a few homework problems.

After lunch, I teach middle school Physical Education class that combines 6th-8th grades both females and males. Since there is no variation to physical fitness, I had the same lesson plans for the middle school as I did the upper school. 

Reflection about Today’s Activities:

Mondays are always busy, but when you also add in a back-to-school picnic and parents night, they tend to get longer. I've never actually enjoyed a Parent's night until this year, where I was actually identified as a teacher instead of a student amongst the parents'. And even though I have only been in the classroom with the kids of 2014-15 for a week, they parents made such a strong impression on me that I'm actually making a difference in their children. I was told my classes were discussed at the dinner table and that just really stood out to me. Last year, when I hosted a German teenager (that I was really close too), it was a like pulling teeth to get her to talk about school and what was going on in her classes. Knowing that my class is worthy of a dinner discussion really motivates me to keep working on my lesson plans to become a better teacher every day.