Although this was not my first time in front of the class, it is the first time that I taught a full lesson all by myself.  Mrs. Houchins gave me a set of notes for the lesson the previous week before I taught the class.  She went over what I should do and how I should explain things to make sure that I was not confused on any aspects of the material the class before I was to teach.  I was extremely nervous to get up on front of a full classroom of ninth grade students; if I did not teach this lesson well, they would not succeed on the quiz or test.  I realized that there is so much importance and pressure on teachers that they do not receive enough credit for.  The day started out as normal; Mrs. Houchins gave the children a warm-up and when everyone was finished, she went over it.  After she answered all questions, it was my turn to start the lesson of the day.  Since I had been previously briefed on the material and I had been observing how Mrs. Houchins taught lessons for a while, I had a good idea of what I was going to do.  We were to go over a section of notes about factoring polynomial equations.  I demonstrated the first couple problems and then had the children try a few problems on their own.  I asked questions to the class as a whole which I was nervous to do because of a chance of a silent response.  However, the children responded in sync with correct answers for the most part.  I felt that I had actually captured the attention of the students and successfully taught them something which is a great, satisfying feeling.  Through this first encounter of teaching a lesson, I learned that the most important thing about teaching is having confidence in the material as well as an engaging personality to get the children involved.

Before this day, I had done nothing but observe Ms. Houchins and grade the children’s test and quizzes.  Ms. Houchins asked me to explain the warm-up to the children after they had all finished the four questions.  I was excited to finally start getting up in front of the class and teach, however, Ms. Houchins asked me to do it while the children were doing the warm-up.  I had no preparation time in order to organize how exactly to explain everything that I wanted to explain and I was unsure if I should try to utilize the SMART board or not.  I had approximately 10 minutes to gather my thoughts on how to present the answers to the four warm-up questions.  Ms. Houchins helped me and the practice SOL algebra questions were not exactly challenging for me, but I did take the class 5 years ago, so I needed a little refresher on the material.  It was only four questions so I was not extremely nervous to present the answers to the class.  Once all the students were completely finished with the warm-up, they inserted their answers with the clickers and Ms. Houchins and I could determine which questions a majority of the students struggled on and which questions were the easiest.  This was a great tool to use to assess the students before the actual SOL test.  When all answers were submitted and the results shown on the board, I realized that all four questions were worth explaining to the class.  I was nervous, so I talked out each problem on my own without asking for student involvement and I also did not use the board in order to attract visual learners to the explanation.  I did not realize these mistakes at the time, but Ms. Houchins gave me constructive criticism and looking back I see my mistakes as well.

Today was my first day in my internship class.  My teacher is Ms. Houchins who teaches a ninth grade algebra I class that happens to be right across the hall from my VTfT classroom.  It was not difficult to be on time to the classroom because of the convenience of the classroom location.  The weekend before my first day of class was KHS’s Leadership Workshop where I served on staff and I was absolutely exhausted from the lack of sleep and hard work that I had participated in all weekend.  This tiredness did impact my first experience in my internship.  I forgot to dress semi-professionally; I wore white-wash jeans with large holes in them with my workshop sweatshirt.  I did not shower that morning, so my hair was a little ratty and messy.  My overall attitude of exhaustedness was very difficult to hide during my time in the class, in fact, I think I might have fallen asleep for a brief period of time during the class.  I was unprepared and I still feel terrible for not creating a good first impression of myself to the students and my cooperating teacher.  Other than my mistakes, the experience was a good one.  Ms. Houchins introduced me to the class as Ms. Gallagher and was very stern in doing so.  She made it clear from the beginning that I was an assistant student teacher and that I was to be treated with respect from everyone in the class even if the students knew me from around school.  It felt empowering to have authority and a sense of professionalism with the students in her classroom, even if I was under par.  I observed the class and began to study the names of the students as Ms. Houchins would call on them or tell them to pay attention.  I learned who the problem children and the quiet children are.  I also asked Ms. Houchins for a seating chart so I can learn all of the names of the children in the classroom.