Practicum Update

I have been loving my practicum, and I'm very sad that my hours are almost over. I'm going back on Monday morning for my last day, and I plan on taking a class picture to frame for myself. I want to remember my first-ever practicum class! To be able to take pictures in class, I had to send home a permission slip for parents to sign. It was a cool learning experience for me, since I know there will be many permission slips in my teaching future. All but two students returned their forms, so I wrote a little reminder post-it for the remaining two students.

I went for a full day on Wednesday the 31st, and just like some of my college professors had described, the elementary students were crazy on Halloween! They had a party planned for the afternoon, so of course, the students wanted nothing to do with their morning math lesson. They were having a refresher in Partial-Quotient Division. This method of division focuses on taking small, manageable parts of the problem, instead of looking at the whole number you're trying to divide.

Luckily, I JUST learned this for the first time in my Math for Elementary Teachers class, so I was able to walk around and help. My practicum teacher had to leave the room for about 15 minutes, so I was left alone with the entire class. They were struggling with the problems, so I was being pulled in 20 different directions to help and check answers. For some reason, their math journals don't come with an answer book, so I had to stop and work out the problems on my own to see if the kids found the right answers. It was super chaotic, but guess what? I handled it! I even had to get after three students who were extremely off task. I was proud (and relieved) to have kept pretty good control of the class, and on Halloween of all days!

It's very different being in the teacher role verses a student role, but I'm adjusting. I still automatically say, "Alyssa" when people at the school ask for my name, so I think one of my biggest struggles has been learning to call myself "Miss Cote" (or Mrs. Cote, as my practicum students call me. I've stopped trying to explain to them that I'm not married yet). I still really think of myself as a student in my own classes, even though my professors say that we are teachers now. I guess it's just hard to believe that I'm only a year away from teaching! That is both extremely gratifying and terrifying!