Cross Country

I have yet to mention on this blog that I have been helping coach the Cross-Country team at my school. It has been tremendously rewarding and a terrific learning experience. One of the reasons why I wanted to become a teacher is to coach at the high school level. I enjoyed being the captain of my cross country and track teams in high school and I think it provided a good foundation. I was a little unsure if I could handle the stress and time commitments of coaching and student teaching, but the head coach has been tremendous in allowing me to miss practices if I need to.

On that note, the head coach is and will be a huge influence on me. The program that he runs at this school is absolutely amazing. It goes beyond the fact that his teams go to state every year. It is about his level of commitment, how he makes running fun so kids want to come out, and how he demands their best, without being a jerk about it.

The great part is that the head coach right now is so completely different from my own high school cross country coach. They were/are both very distinguished head coaches, but that is were the similarities end. I am now able to see two completely different approaches to coaching and also craft my own vision for the type of coach I want to be.

I have gotten out of coaching just as much as I have put in. The one main lesson that I have learned from coaching is that it is still teaching, but just in a different environment.

The Power of Sharing

One of the big aspects of teaching that I like is the sharing of information, best practices, and tools with others. I am very fortunate to have people around me that also believe in that practice as well.

I am thrilled to have developed a relationship with a classmate of mine from the university that I attend. We call each other around once a week and talk about how our classes are going and discuss things that we have done, both good and bad. We also try to help each other out with ideas for lesson plans and such. It's a great feeling knowing that you helped someone else out of a jam for lesson planning, and it is great to have a resource that is just a phone call away when I get stuck.

A perfect example is a few weeks ago, I mentioned to him that one of my cooperating teachers had indicated to me that she would like to see me create most of the documents going forward for one of my classes. It was a pretty daunting feeling, but then he told me that he would copy all of the files from his high school for that subject and allow me to copy his flash drive. I couldn't believe his generosity and how lucky I am that he would share that with me.

Another excellent resource that I have is my brother. Our relationship is very similar to the one above, with the only exception being that we don't teach the same subject area. The good part is that he is an English teacher and I am always looking for ways to incorporate reading into my subject area. I believe that reading plays a very large role in instruction, no matter what subject you teach.

Last night, I was over at my brother's place catching up and I mentioned this project I am doing in one of my classes where the students pick a newspaper article out of the paper about the economy, summarize it and write about all of the different people who are affected by the article. He immediately told me about a graphic organizer that he uses at his school for someone very similar. So he emailed all of the different types of graphic organizers that his high school has and I was able to tweak one of them to fit my needs.

The other resource that I take advantage of is the Internet. It is amazing to me just how much great resources there are on the Internet. Also, with web 2.0 becoming more and more prevalent, I can only imagine the possibilities in the future. I am always trying to improve upon not only the links I have to resources, but also how I go about finding out about, collecting, and organizing those links. Once I am finished with student teaching, I am going to assemble a digital portfolio of myself, and one of the aspects that I want to include are my resources. I am ultimately looking to create a one-stop-shop for all things Business Education on the Internet. I am very impressed by pretty much everything that Dan Meyer does, but one thing in particular that I want to do is re-create when he posted all of his Math resources online, but only do that with my Business Ed resources. I am hoping to create a website(Maybe a blog) of some sort that I can upload all of my resources to, and so can everyone else. I have come across a number of website on the web that have plenty of resources, but none are directly orientated towards Business Ed teachers. The tricky part is going to be creating something online that becomes popular enough that a lot of people with know about, so they can contribute.

It's all about giving back and sharing....just like they taught us in kindergarten.

Classroom Management

In my 8th hour Intro class, I laid down the law with them on Thursday. I told them that there was just too much chatting going on and I gave them a seating chart in the computer lab. The rest of the day Thursday they were fine because I think they were still in a little shock over what I said. But on Friday, the message stuck. We went into the lab, they got into their assigned seats and worked productively the whole period.

The same goes for my Computer class. My cooperating teacher told e to switch the seats around now that we switched units. So I moved a student who I was concerned about right in front of the teacher's station so I could keep an eye on her and make sure that she was keeping pace with everyone else. The next day, I was on her quite a bit about keeping up. She talked back and was getting increasingly frustrated with my numerous requests to keep pace. So the next day, after speaking with my cooperating teacher, I filled out a detention slip but didn't sign it. I explained everything to her, but she still didn't cooperate. I gave her the detention, and since then, she has been a lot better. I like the students where just testing me to see if I would actually act on what I was saying. I kept telling my 8th hour Intro class that I would give them a seating chart, but I never backed that talk up until now. The same goes for the student in my computer class. I showed her the detention form filled out but not signed at the beginning of class. She still didn't do what I said, until I actually gave her the detention form.

Always Something To Do

In my last post, I talked about how sometimes I feel like I am as prepared as I need to be and other times I don't. Well, I learned a lesson this week in that I can never to prepared enough. I fell behind in my lesson planning and then on Monday evening as I was heading home from practice, I heard on NPR that the Dow fell almost 800 points as the House rejected the bailout bill. So when I got home, one of the first things I did was try to find out all that I could about this so that I was prepared to talk about it the next day in class. Well, the next day wasn't as planned out as it could have been and I had to move on with the lesson. Now, if I had been ahead of the game, I could have had plenty of time to read up on the breaking news and still be fully prepared. So I learned the very important lesson that there is always something to do, even when you think you are good to go. This lesson comes at a perfect time as I will be starting my third prep soon. I take over a Consumer Education class in the 2nd quarter and I am not as prepared as I need to be in that class either. So I am working to get back ahead in both of my classes and planning for the start of the third. All in all, I am glad that I learned this lesson now and not later on.