Colaboración

Although I don’t feel completely comfortable at my new placement yet, I think this week went much better than the last. I’m starting to get to know my surroundings, my cooperating teachers, and my students, which has helped a lot. I know that this placement is going to be a challenge for me, but I think it will be a challenge that will really push me to grow as a teacher.

Last week, my goals were to gain some respect from the cooperating teacher that didn’t seem to have a lot of faith in student teachers and to develop ways students can work on their speaking (in Spanish) in the classroom. It seems like I did gain some respect from my cooperating teacher, which was great. On Monday, we sat down and talked about things we were having trouble with and it seemed to help a lot! It seemed as if we were on different pages beforehand and it just needed to be understood what we needed from each other. Things have been going a lot better with her and I believe she has gained a lot of confidence in me after seeing me teach this past week. I’m excited about the improvement we have made in our relationship. I have also given my students a few opportunities to speak this week, but I’d like to keep developing this throughout the semester.

My goals for this coming week is to continue working with my teachers to gain their confidence in me and to make sure we’re all on the same page and to plan my unit for the book I’m teaching in my ESL class.

The word I chose to describe this week is actually a Spanish word: “mejorando”. It means “getting better”. In my eyes, I feel like this is the only way to describe how this week went. Last week, I felt terrible and overwhelmed about my placement. This week, I’m don’t feel all the way adjusted, but I do feel like it’s getting better and better each day. It may not by my ideal placement, but I know I can get a lot from it and become a better teacher because of it.

This past week I learned a lot about collaboration. I have two cooperating teachers at this placement and I am finding that it can sometimes be hard to try to collaborate with both of them. I especially had a hard time last week, my first week, when I wasn’t exactly sure where I was supposed to go and when. This is when I learned just how big of a role communication plays in collaboration. If there isn’t clear communication, it is impossible to collaborate. After straightening things out between my and one of my cooperating teachers this week, I feel like I have been able to collaborate with both of them much better.

I have also come to realize what a big part schools take on within the larger community context as well, especially being as big a school as ETHS. This was definitely apparent as we had teacher’s conferences, which make up a large number of the people who live in the community. There were many students that were very interested in everything we do at school and wanted the best for their child there.

While I was at my old placement, Lincoln Hall was trying to decide on whether they will renovate the whole school or tear it down and build a new one. The larger community played a big role in this as Lincoln Hall had to get permission from various people in the town to do either one. This is because it truly does effect the community around the school.

So far, I have been able to work with my cooperating teachers to develop different activities and teaching strategies to create an effective learning climate. We have been trying to work together to make the most of our time. In my ESL class especially, my cooperating teacher and I try to incorporate their cultures, personal experiences, and personalities into the course as well. This makes helps students feel comfortable and accepted in the classroom, which is what we want. We hope to make it a place where they will feel safe and valued.

At conferences, my cooperating teacher and I were also able to discuss students’ lives outside of the school with some of their parents. We learned a lot that we didn’t know previously, which can account for some of the behaviors of various students, whether they are good behaviors or not. For example, we learned that one of our students is dealing with depression and sometimes gets really angry because of it. Although we have not seen this to be much of a problem in the classroom for far, it is good to know so that we don’t set him off for any reason if he seems to be overly depressed or unmotivated. We also just received an email from the mother of one of our students explaining that she was absent quite a bit because of depression and anxiety problems. She mentioned that one of her biggest phobias is rain, which made us understand why she keeps missing so much school. She really struggles with the phobias, to the point of having been hospitalized a few times because of them. It was important for us to know this so that we can understand her struggles and help her out in any way we can.

Because I’m only in my second week at my new placement, I have been doing a lot of co-teaching and co-planning. This has been working well, because not only have the students been able to get used to having me do more teaching, but I can also get used to the way my cooperating teachers teach their classes. I also sit down with my teachers to plan for the next week before I create all of my lesson plans.  This semester, I also have a class of native speakers, in which they are learning a lot about Hispanic myths and legends. Unfortunately, I have never read these myths or legends and, therefore, I don’t know how well I would be able to teach them alone. I have also been warned that the native speakers like to challenge their Spanish teachers, especially if they’re not Hispanic (like me). This makes me feel really uncomfortable, so we have decided that it might be best for my cooperating teacher and I to just work on co-teaching for this class.

During this past week, I started feeling a little more comfortable at my placement, which made it a little easier to initiate collaboration with my cooperating teachers than it was last week when I was new and terrified. I think a lot of my problems with my one cooperating teacher stemmed from lack of communication and, therefore, collaboration in the two days I was at the school for class last week. Things are starting to get better, though, which makes me happy.

I was really happy to see my supervisor this week, because he was a familiar face in a big, somewhat uncomfortable place. It felt comforting to talk to him and tell him how things were going so far, even though it wasn’t easy. He made me have a more positive look on the whole situation and reassured me that I wasn’t the only one to have had trouble adjusting. I was really glad he could come. J