Monday – Thursday, I observed for maybe 25% of the time and spent the rest of the time sitting with different groups of four, choosing whichever group was the furthest behind at the moment.  Wherever I sat, that group caught up, and then I could move on to the next group.  By doing this, it left my master teacher free to teach in “whole group” while I concentrated on keeping the class at a constant pace, supplying tutoring where needed.  I was also able to learn more names.

On Friday, my master teacher’s daycare provider was sick so she had to stay home with her two small children.  I was her substitute for five periods.  It was a lot of fun, and I didn’t have any substitute-type issues because: the kids knew me, I knew them (and most importantly, most of their names), I knew where they sat, and I knew the lesson that was to be taught (and the “class history” leading up to it).  This was so much better than a normal sub job!  The kids stayed on task in excess of 80% of the time (~40 minutes out of a 50 minute period) – they were engaged – and they got a lot of work done as a result.  It was a good way to end the week.

On Thursday afternoon (before my master teacher knew her daycare provider was sick), we worked on the plan for next week – the week I will begin to teach on a part-time basis.  Next week is sort of an odd week, so not an ideal week to start teaching:

• Monday is a holiday,
• Tuesday is prep for a chapter test (and I’ll be teaching at least one period on Tuesday, but it will mostly be review)
• Wednesday is “career day” where around 40 people from all walks of life will come in and talk to the school about their careers – I’m scheduled to be in my own classroom to talk about my now former career (Engineering) for three periods
• Thursday is a 40 minute chapter test
• Friday, we begin a new unit, and I will teach the first period class at a minimum, if not other classes.

The reason I mention first period specifically is because I have to do certain tasks for the State of California to get a teaching credential.  One of the tasks is to identify a class of students to work with, and then two students in particular who will need some form of attention (an English Language Learner being one, and a student with some other need being the other).  I am to teach something in this class, but offer specific help/modification to these two students to see if they will benefit from targeted instruction.  The term the teachers/schools use for this is “scaffolding.”  I anticipate that this extra attention will help the two selected students (if one of them would stop talking and pay attention!).  Of all the classes, period one is the most “mixed” or heterogeneous, which made it easier to find two target students.  Also, period one is still sort of waking up in the mornings, so they are the most attentive and least disruptive of the five periods of the day.