Clinical Observation: Hours 16-22

Today was another great day at Union Middle! I got to talk a lot to Mrs. Dazley about teaching, her likes and dislikes and discussed with her the differences between middle and high schools. She told me that when it came down for her to decided where to teach, she liked the high schools a lot but was raising a family as well so it was important to her to be able to be home after school. With many High Schools they have after school activities such as FCCLA and she didnt want to have to deal with that when her children were home, so that played a big factor in where she was to teach. I had never thought of things that way, and she made a great point.

Today when I arrived, I helped Mrs. Dazley put the students into their new seating arrangement. She had them choose a color square and that correlated to a table where they were to sit. So, in essence, they chose their seats but it also gave enough variety and mix up. Today her CTE classes began a new unit on Foods so today they went over food safety so tomorrow they will be able to cook in the lab! I am excited to see that tomorrow. I graded her Child Development classes study guides for unit 4 and it took a while! It took me 2 full periods before I finished. I also got to take roll for her classes and I input all the scores after I graded all the assignments. Today was the day I presented a motivator to her Child Development classes. I found a cute story online that was called 'The First Date'. It was a story about a date and you read it from both the girl and boy's perspective. After the story I talked with the students about dating and expectations and things we need to be looking for in a mate someday. Mrs. Dazley gave me a worksheet to give to them to fill out about what they look for in a mate and what they are doing now in their lives to be a good spouse and parent. It was fun. They really listened as I read the story and seemed to enjoy it.

DISCIPLINE: One way Mrs. Dazley disciplines her students is with her seating charts. She moves them everytime they start a new unit so that helps cut down on the noise level. Some of her classes are too noisy and the students would get up and move around to sit by their friends so she lets them pick where they sit sometimes. If the noise level got out of hand, she would threaten to get the seating chart and put them back. I kept hoping she really would do it so they would know that they werent empty threats but she never did.

Time Management: Mrs. Dazley gets to the school around 6am to get things ready for the day. She told me that FACS teachers and CTE teachers in general will spend the most time out of all the teachers because not only do we have to grade papers and get those things done but we also have to buy many supplies such as the food, fabric, art projects and many more things. One of her classes was ahead of the other so in order for them to both end in the same spot she stalled a bit by having them go around the room and tell the class on thing on their lists for mate selection. I think it is important to have you same classes end in the same place so it is easier for you to remember if both classes have covered all the same material. Things can get out of hand if one is always ahead of the other, and she didnt want to just have them sit around if they finished early.

Teaching Techniques: Mrs. Dazley has a varitey of things she uses in the class. Today when she had the students draw their own seats was definitely a teaching strategy. She also has things she calls 'hot seats' in which she uses to call on the students, that way participation is fair. She also has letters up on the board that spell QUIET. For each letter she takes down when they are being noisy, she will remove a letter. If all the letters are removed, the class has to spend time after class. She did keep 2 girls after class today and the knew she meant business.

Thats the Show!