Fitzpatrick Student Teacher Blog Week # 14

Students appear to be getting comfortable with the expectations of my classroom as they are listening better and not trying to get away with as many careless choices as they had in previous weeks. However, on Wednesday during my 2^nd period, I had to write up my first students for acting in a manner disrespectful to authority. While running the PACER test, I had to penalize three of my students for leaving the start line prior to the sound of the bell. When I called out the three students, one of them decided to turn toward my direction, raise his arm, and flip his middle finger at me. Immediately seeing this action, I called out his name and told him to come over by me and that his PACER was finished and had a conversation with him about why he felt that the action he chose to make was a proper action to make in class. The student would not admit the action was toward me but rather was toward the group of students there were waiting to run the PACER in the next heat. I told the student that even if that was the case, it is never appropriate to flash that kind of gesture in a classroom toward anyone, faculty or students and that I have no choice but to write him up for inappropriate behavior. The student ended up receiving after-school detention for his actions. Since then the student has been himself but not acting out in as much a wildly manner.

In class we have begun new units this week, transferring from Basketball to Fitness in the Freshman classes and from Fitness to Softball in the Sophomore classes. I believe this change has been a helpful asset because not only is it a change of pace for the students, but also because each unit has been moved outdoors. In Fitness we began with longer dynamic warm-ups followed by suicide runs and team-building relay races. As expected, the students are not completely thrilled about to fitness unit because students would rather play games than exercise. As a teacher, it is my job to introduce my students to unknown forms of fitness the students can participate in outside of the classroom, outside of the athletic world. In an attempt to make the lesson more engaging, I allowed the students to choose their own teams, then assigned a specific distance each team had to complete within their relay race after teams were formed, thus allowing students to work as a team and still have an equal opportunity to succeed in regard to every other class. On Thursday we were forced to be back in the gym due to weather, and our field house was out of commission due to a career fair, causing classes to combine with other teachers. Students are very limited in the activities they can participate in when situations like this happen, which make for a very difficult learning environment. Still being in the fitness unit, I chose to combine with a teacher who is teaching Juniors so that while they were in the gymnasium playing basketball, my students were able to run along the stairs of the stadium bleachers, which allowed my students to meet the criteria of the Fitness unit. IN the Sophomore classes, students are just beginning technique on passing, catching, and hitting. Although most students can perform these actions with relative consistency, I am quite astounded at how many sophomore students still fail to meet the minimal expectations on throwing and catching.  I spent the entire first day of the unit instructing on the proper technique of throwing and catching, and the importance of each element (elbow back, shoulders square, point of release, follow through, and stepping with the opposite foot.) I began with students throwing to each other from distances of 5 yards, then moved them to 10 yards, and have them practice for approximately 4 minutes, giving me enough time to observe each student thoroughly and give quality corrective feedback to students who needed it. Near the end of class, I rotated students so that they were not always with the same groups, allowing them to learn to work with people of other abilities, and engaged the students in 3 rounds of 1-minute games, totaling up their points for each successful pass and catch while subtracting points for every dropped catch. While simple, all students were engaged as you could see the output of activity engage increase dramatically from the 4-minute practice sessions. The production rate of positive completions of catches and throws increased significantly too, as students were concentrating on the learning task at a greater level to receive points. I was most notable happy to recognize that the students in my 7^th period, who give me the roughest time, were part of the student body that was highly engaged in the activity.

The cooperating teachers have given me complete independence now, observing from greater distances and not letting their presence be felt by both myself and the students. The classrooms are truly my classrooms for the next few weeks. Instead of telling me what they observed in my teaching, they are making me reflect on my lesson and ask me how it went, what I could improve on, and any changed I may make. I have noticed that since they have started this, I am becoming much more critical of my lessons, which is promoting my confidence, which I believe is one of the main reasons the students are beginning to follow my direction better. I am assessing my situations and standing firm on my actions, which I believe is what I have struggled with the most.

Over the next week, my goals are to continuing building rapport with the students to enhance engagement in my classroom. I am beginning to learn more about my students’ extracurricular activities, and will continue asking at least one kid in each period more detailed questions involving their interests in and out of class, and use that information to decided which lessons I want to use so that my class will be more actively involved on a daily basis. I am also going to do more research on High School appropriate fitness and softball games to keep the students engaged while not confining my students and myself to the same monotony of daily games used within the current unit. This is my opportunity to attempt new concepts and assess their effectiveness so that when I do begin a professional position, I will have fresh concepts and ideas to incorporate into my personal curriculum.

In reference to Standard 2, I have begun my lessons be demonstrating proper form and the importance of the key components of the form in order to properly demonstrate a softball catch and throw, and proper fitness movements to enhance physical fitness. I am engaging in discussion with the students, asking them the benefits of knowing the proper form of the movements and how it benefits them outside of the classroom. We discussed the importance of aim and direction in softball, relating it to importance in driving skill and how increasing your hand-eye coordination in softball can benefit your hand-eye coordination and directional skills in driving, which is a relevant topic to my sophomores.

In reference to Standard to Standard 3, as mentioned earlier, during relay races for Freshman, I allowed students to choose their own teams, but in choosing their partners, they would be assessed and given distances to cover that would be of different lengths to make said races an equal challenge for each team, equalizing every team's opportunity to succeed in each race, with distances and exercises varying each race to continuously challenge each member of the class.