Clinical Observation, Hours 1-7

Well the first day is over with! I got there this morning and classes began! I felt so old being back at my old stomping ground. For once, I felt tall :)

Mrs. Dazley teaches every single class period! She doesnt have a free hour because they had some extra boys they needed to put into a class so she stepped up to the challenge, so she had no prep time. Impressive!

Her classroom is very nice and the technology in it. I was surprised! She has 2 classrooms for the CTE classes. The sewing room and the foods room, which both have classroom space with desks in the front. They are connected kinda like hotel rooms that connect are, with doors in the middle to connect one to the other. She teaches 3 periods of CTE classes and today they talked about nanotechnology and different textiles. She then has 2 Child Development classes and a Cluster Group of some resource/handicapped kids. The last class of the day is Teen Living, which is composed of the 15 boys and 2 girls.

DISCIPLINE: As soon as her classes arrived, she would call them to order and get going with some review from previous classes and what they were to do for the day. The listened to her at the beginning, but the longer she talked, the less they listened. Once they worked on the assignment/activity for the day, the class became quite loud and chatty. This didnt seem to bother her so much and she told me on Monday she doesnt push it too much because it is hard to get their attention after a weekend, however, I thought it was quite noisy and the students could have been better at staying on task. Her Child Developement classes were probably the most distruptive of all the classes.

TEACHING TECHNIQUES: When I walked into her classroom this morning, it was filled with all sorts of different things. Her desk area and closets were filled with so many resources and she has lots of neat and fun ideas for her students. If I were a teacher to inhert all those, I would be one happy girl! She does try to start out classes with bell ringers (motivators) and did incorporate games into her lessons. Today she had them play games, watch a powerpoint, read articles as a group and present an overhead to the class among other things. She definitely uses a variety of methods and is creative with it. She created the reading groups by calling out their sewing maching numbers and I had asked her if she had heard of a website called randomizer.org- she had not. I told her it was something I had been taught and it was helpful in creating different numbers of groups and she seemed excited about using it. I was glad I could be of help in that way!

MANAGEMENT: As far as time management goes, she definitely uses it well, especially with having no free period to prepare. She said that she gets there around 6:15 in the morning to get things done for her classes. Some of the students hadnt finished all their sewing projects so she told them she was available before and after school for them to come in and finish, and I thought that was very gracious of her. She told me that she does a new seating arrangement every time they move on to a new teaching unit. She tries to not have any open seats because the kids will move and sit by their friends if there are any open seats by them. Keeping them on task and in their seats seemed like something that could use a bit more work. I did like how she had the class set up, and that she makes them rotate often and always be changing in new groups.