Week 5

This week was full of challenges! First off my co-operating teacher was away for two days. Also, this week was PSSA testing. With those two elements combined my two classes were difficult to manage at times. I had one particular incident with a female student that tested me. I had just told the student I would be covering her keys with a white paper. She knew she would have to put her hands under the keys as I had explained earlier in the class. The student threw a huge fit and had a horrible attitude through the rest of the class period. I also think I caught her calling me a bad name to her friend! Needless to say I was furious! I didn't allow the student to see how mad I was and I announced at the end of class that she would be staying after the bell rang. After class I told her how unacceptable her behavior was and that I would not allow it in my class (that’s the short version).

My other keyboarding class was hard to control as well. Looking back on the situations I feel that I handled them pretty well. I think it is easy to get discouraged on days your students are not behaving, but I had to remind myself of the many factors influencing their behavior.

Toward the end of the week the students began to behave much better. I used positive reinforcement to reward the classes with a fun assignment for their improved behavior. I took one of my classes a few days to earn the assignment, but in the end they did.

What I would change about the week would be starting my accounting lesson planning earlier. My new class I will be picking up is accounting and planning the first lesson was difficult for me. Looking back I realize the lesson wasn’t hard at all. It just takes time to get used to the material and how to extract the important concepts from the book. I turned in my lessons on time, but I fell I would have been less stressed out if I would have started the planning sooner. Besides that my week was enjoyable even if it did test my patients!