Week 7

I found senior skip day to be most valuable about my previous week. Seniors are the majority of students in my classes and it was nice to have a free day to catch up. I completely forgot about senior skip day and it was a nice surprise that I would be able to use my lesson that I prepared the next day. I feel it was nice to have a free day to grade papers, make exams, etc. during the day because I was falling a little behind. On Tuesday, I gave a really hard Accounting exam and a student came during their study hall to review with me. I handed the test results back yesterday and he came to me and said how happy he was with his grade and said it was because we reviewed before the test. That was a nice aspect of my week.

If I were to change an aspect of my previous week it would be to have more thoroughly investigated the on-line classroom I developed for my Computer Applications courses. I thought I had everything figured out with it but as soon as my fifth period students logged on, they immediately began chatting with each other on the QuickPost feature. Soon after, I heard a female student exclaim, "I AM NOT A LESBIAN!" (after she was reading what other students typed about her on QuickPost) Boy oh boy, to top it off, I was getting observed! So needlessly to say, I disabled the QuickPost feature and class was back to normal. Also, something else I would have changed would have been with the on-line classroom. I have the students upload their activities to the online classroom but there isn't a way to re-save what the students uploaded so they can see what they did right/wrong and the comments I inserted into the Excel file.

6th Week

I found teaching my third class this week to be the most valuable asset of my week. I never realized how much planning acutally goes into teaching classes and I never expected so much extra time to be dedicated to each class. The third class I started teaching is Computer Appications which is not a new prep class but the class is on different material compared to the other Computer Applications class. It is really consfusing keeping the two classes seperated pertaining to what each class has done and needs to do for the following days. My lesson plans have proved valuable for me because it always is a nice resource to get me back on track with what each class is doing. It is also difficult to prepare for each class because my fifth period Comp. App. class is very proficient at typing and picking up the new material in Excel yet my eighth period class is much slower. I have to keep that in mind when creating my lesson plans.

The past week was a shorter one for me. I didn't have school Monday and Tuesday was a half day for the students. Looking back on the past week, I would have changed the way students hand in material in the Computer Applications course. I am finding myself to be overwhelmed with papers the students submit. After grading each paper, I then have to find the time to return the papers the next class period. This has led me to create an online classroom which I will implement this week for the students so they can upload their class activities directly towards me, doing away with the paper print-outs which will also save ink and trees.

4th Week of Class

I found teaching Computer Applications for two weeks and Accounting for a week to be the most beneficial part of my week. The students are all responsive to my teaching style and are treating me fully as the teacher instead of sharing it with their original teacher as they did in beginning. I am also happy with getting through Accounting for the first week. I was never good at Accounting and now I find myself teaching it! It took a lot of time in the library to get caught up on the material but now I'm good to go.

If there was something I could change about the previous week it would have been to find a way to present Accounting to the students in a more captivating way. When I am teaching the material, I look at the students' faces and know they are completely bored and are thinking "why do we have to learn this", so I explained to the students again why the material was important to learn. Once I get more comfortable teaching the Accounting material, I will then find ways to make the class more exciting which will hopefully spark the students' interest in learning the material.