What doesn't kill you....

I am done with Student Teaching; the fourteen weeks are over. It was quite the ride; full of ups and downs. It seems like I just started and now it's over. (Technically, it ended last Tuesday, but I have been so busy until now that I haven't had the time to post about it.) And I still have papers to grade and a test and review guide to write, but as far as the teaching goes, I am finished.

It is definitely a bittersweet moment for me. On the one hand, I am glad to be done with the time-suck known as lesson plan creation and all of the stress that it created. But on the other hand, I really miss the actual act of teaching the students. I finished teaching on Tuesday and on Wednesday, I was in a funk. It took me a few days to figure it out, but I believe it is because I am no longer able to interact with and lead a hundred teenagers.

...Makes you stronger
This was my mantra I kept saying to myself the last few weeks. My cooperating teachers definitely made it difficult for me, but I feel like I will be a better teacher as a result. In two of my three preps, I had to fill the last month and a half with material that I created myself and I couldn't use anything that either of my cooperating teachers used. There were plenty of moments when I was so frustrated and upset with them. But I know that that is how my first year of teaching is going to be like. I want to have the classes be my own and the only way for that is to do everything yourself. I went out for a few drink with some of the other teachers and I was talking to a first year teacher. I told her what was required of me and she told me that she was doing the same thing right now. So I feel better prepared for my first year. Talking with other student teachers in my college program, I am a little ahead of the pack in that regard. I think it is also something I will bring up on job interviews as well, to try and separate myself from everyone else. I am glad that my cooperating teachers had high standards for me and didn't let me take the easy way out and just use their materials. (I hope to replicate these high standards for my students.)

The best part was that I had an opportunity to say all of this to my cooperating teachers before they left on Tuesday. And they also returned the nice praises as well. It was nice to hear that the hard work was worth the effort.

IBEA Conference

I had first heard about this conference from another student at my college. He invited me to go along with him. I thought it would be a great experience to attend the Illinois Business Education Association's annual conference. I was lucky enough to have already attended a teacher conference before. My brother presented at a conference last year and he snuck me in. As a result, I was constantly comparing the IBEA conference to the one I went to last year. I have to say, IBEA didn't stack up well at all.

It took us forever to get down to Effingham from Chicagoland. From car trouble to rain to fog, it was all a bad omen for things to come. The conference started off poorly for me as the first presentation I went to ended up being nothing like the description in the booklet. The presenters broke every rule of PowerPoint presentations, which might be ok elsewhere, but not in a room full of business educators who teach proper presentation etiquette (i.e not reading directly off the screen). Most of the presentations I attended were this way. I felt bad constantly telling Jon how the conference I went to last year was so much better. The food for dinner Thursday night was really bad. It was a Jimmy Buffet theme, so I understood why we we served cheeseburgers, but they were not edible in the least. At least they gave us plenty of drink tickets. Friday, I did manage to see a worthwhile presentation about Microsoft Expression Studio. It sounds very promising and something I want to investigate further. The last session I went to was for new professionals. It was supposed to be more like a round-table discussion, but it ended up mainly being the four presenters providing us with tips and advice.

The other main reason why I wanted to go was the networking opportunities. The problem with going to the conference with someone is that you don;t really talk to anyone else. We ended up having dinner with some other Young teachers from downstate. So were all very nice, but I don't see any networking opportunities resulting from it. However, I was definitely glad that In had Jon there to commiserate with.

I am thinking about attending the NBEA conference because it will be here in Chicago. I just hope it won't be like the IBEA conference.

Going to State!!!

I want to add a quick post about the tremendous cross-country team at my school.  Both the boys and girls teams have qualified for the state meet next week in Peoria.  I couldn't be happier for both teams because I have personally seen all of the hard work they have done throughout the season and they definitely deserve to go.  

On a personal note, I am just as excited because I never made it to state in my high school career.  I can't wait to soak up the incredible atmosphere at the state meet and also experience all that is entailed in taking a team on an overnight trip like the state meet affords.  Hopefully we will come home with some hardware, either on the team side or the personal side.  Stay tuned!!!

Student Evaluations

This past week, we started the second quarter and with that came a new lineup of classes for me.  I picked up a Consumer Education class to give me three preps.  But it is 8th hour and I already was teaching an Intro class then, so I had to switch around my lineup of classes I teach in the afternoon.  I wanted to have those students in the class that I was formerly teaching to evaluate me, and my cooperating teachers assisted in getting that done.  (I didn't want to potentially skew the results by administering the evaluation myself.)  

I was in the middle of grading papers when the evaluations were dropped off on my desk.  I wanted to finish grading and then look over the results.  But I couldn't resist the urge to immediately pour over them.  These evaluations were from probably my "toughest" class so far.  They are a very chatty class and I sometimes struggle to get them refocused and stop talking with their neighbor.  A few weeks ago, I had to take a few minutes and discuss this issue with them and also assign them a seating chart in the computer lab.  Because of all of that, I was really anxious to see what would come back on these evaluations.  As expected, they were pretty mixed with some pretty good and some pretty bad ones.  The good part was that there wasn't any that were really negative.  A few even made me laugh.  For example, one of the questions was: What could I do differently or better.  One of my students replied that I should have chosen a more interesting subject to teach.  

One of the more interesting aspects was finding out that I have a word that I use too much and repeatedly in class.  This was one area in particular that I was paying close attention to.  Both of my cooperating teachers have informed me that I use the words "you guys" very often throughout my classes.  I have tried to make adjustments and work on this throughout the semester.  The really interesting part was that not one student mentioned that I use a word too much, but it wasn't "you guys."  There were three students who mentioned that I use the word "exactly" too often.  So here I am trying to make sure that I don't say one particular catch-phrase and I end up using another one too much.  But the good news is that I am aware of all of this and have something to focus on improving.  

I can't wait to get the rest of my evaluations from the other classes that I am teaching to hear what they have to say.  No offense to my college supervisor or my cooperating teachers, but I believe that the most important evaluation of myself comes from my students because they are the ones that have been with me everyday throughout this incredible journey and they are most important.