Today was more observation, which is me sitting at a desk at the side of the room.  While I’ve yet to nod off, I notice that I become very tired sitting there all day with nothing to do but watch.  Today I took notes each class period.  The basic skeleton looks something like this:

Starts positive – compliment about pep fest or something from yesterday

Review

Informal Assessment with its own built-in review

Journaling

It’s a formula I think I can get behind.   What it is not is 45 minutes of lecture; instead the students are busy learning for most of the time.

I can already tell, though, that as the day goes on, the students get rowdier.  I suppose this makes sense, and so now the challenge will be in determining how much noise I will tolerate, and how strict I want to be as far as consequences are concerned.  The cooperating teacher seems to have a pretty good handle on this, but I worry that much of her clout is based on existing relationships and/or her maternal status within the classroom.  I’ll have to find my own style.  She laughs a lot, even as she’s disciplining, and I like that.  Humor has always been my main go-to within the classroom.

In the end, it was a good day, especially since I learned not long after leaving that the school I used to work at, just a mile south of the school I’m student teaching at, had a pretty brutal girlfight involving blood splattering, handcuffs, and a police officer getting either kicked or punched in the groin, depending on whose account you trust.