Coming to a Close

I'm a bit bothered that I have not posted in a while, but it is with good reason.  I am in the home stretch of training.  The last day of my graduate course is today.  I still have to revise a few lesson plans for the final project, but aside from that, there are no more scheduled meeting times.  That means my last 12 hour day is today! YAYAYA!

Next week, I still am required to go to my field training site to observe and teach.  This is often the highlight of my day.  I get to work with students as a whole class, in small groups or one on one.  Establishing a healthy academic relationship with them is satisfying for me and beneficial for them.  Today was the midterm for two sections of Living Environment I've been observing and occasionally teaching.  Unfortunately, I do not expect many of them to do well.  During classes they were often not engaged or enjoying themselves and therefore not effectively learning.

I do not quite understand this, but when they were finishing the test, they found it acceptable to hand it into me telling that it was finished.  I would look at it, see that there were at least five questions not answered.  I returned it to them saying that is was, indeed, not finished and that I wanted them to try to answer the questions.  It seems that many of them are so easily satisfied with low mediocrity or failure.

One student insisted that he did not know and had nothing to write.  I insisted that he write something, even if it was that he did not know.  Hopefully this well let them see that they must know when something is finished before they can finish it well.  Obviously, this presents an overwhelming challenge for both student and teacher.  Most importantly, I think they do understand that I have a genuine concern for their academic success.  My ability to address that in summer school is limited because these are technically not my classes, but it gives me insight into what I would like to see in the fall.

Also, next week, I must attend my Student Achievement Framework sessions from 2-4 at CCNY, a much better and earlier time slot than 4-6.  Once next week is over, I am free for most of August until the last week on Thursday when I have to report to my school for teacher orientation.  In retrospect, training has gone by extremely fast even though it felt like time was static while I was in it.  I look forward (with some mild trepidation) to establishing my own class in the fall and continuing to learn how to help students do well in every aspect of their lives.