When I walked into my classroom on the first day, I was looking forward to having an engaging first day with the students. I was a little disappointed when my teacher said she didn't want us interacting with the kids at all the first day, just observe. She didn't even introduce us nor did the kids seem interested at all. For kindergarten students that I am used to they would all come up and ask a million questions and want to get to know somebody new in their classroom, which is why it shocked me to see that they didn't even seem to pay attention to us at all. I also noticed that whites are the minority in the school and the classroom that I am in, which is actually what I expected coming into the area that the school is located, but it really didn't register until I saw it that first day. Another thing I noticed from day 1 is that for having a classroom of under 20, the majority of the students in my class have behavioral issues and end up leaving the room or taking breaks multiple times a day to regather themselves. This caught me off guard as well, I am not used to seeing a teacher have to deal with so many behavioral problems while trying to teach a class.
I was also surprised that the students in my class did not seem to be very interested in having new teachers in the classroom because normally kids get excited about change. It took a good 2 weeks before the students even really knew my partner's and my names because they just didn't seem to care. We were engaging with them from the very beginning, so it just seemed very odd that they were so nonchalant about it. My guess is they get a lot of visitors and student teachers so it was nothing new for them.
ReplyDeleteTo me this is somewhat surprising. My first day the teacher had us engaged with the students as much as possible. We weren't given any specific responsibility right away, but we had the ability to help where we saw best fit. We didn't necessarily do that much regardless, but it surprises me that there was encouragement to not engage with the students in the class.
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