My second day at Ed Smith went well. I shared a little with Mary Lynn about why things didn't work out at Frazer my first day and she was very open about things. She told me I could do the car lesson if I wanted to but to maybe have another teacher example and not have fag for the age group. She wasn't offended or closed off to it but was more like a suggestion or discussion. I told her it was for 8th grade so probably wouldn't do it for the younger grades but appreciated that. She has K-5. I told her that I asked to be placed with someone who was okay with having a gay student teacher. She said she didn't know what the procedure was as far as being openly gay but told me change happens gradually and that once I get a job she's sure it will all take its course naturally with me being open about it in the school and was supportive. She told me her mother is an activist and stopped going to a church they attended when a person that lead the church married a gay couple and got kicked out of the church. She also told me her mom had her protesting and boycotting things regarding gay rights for a long time and that her previous job was to raise money for AIDS with kids jewelry and that she had her own studio. Her brother in law is gay and although her brother is marrying a woman soon she thinks he's gay as well. She also informed me she went to graduate school with Daniela and was surprised with how things went while I was there. She told me that her X-husband was a womanizer and that's why she told me she has trust issues and that when she came to the US she didn't have a license and was dependent on him, and has worked hard to get her independence. I really respected that about her, and can see that perhaps she isn't a bad person just overly protective of her job and afraid to lose what she has. Sometimes people act and react overly negative because of whatever it is they are afraid of. Daniela was sick while I was there and took two days off because of it with a sinus infection, and although I am no longer there, whatever she had was passed onto me. I've been sick the past five days with a terrible sinus infection, non stop blowing of my nose. It hasn't been fun, but am getting through it. I even brought in a role of toilet paper my first day and one of the kids asked for a tissue and there weren't any so i gave him some of my toilet paper. A lot of the kids have runny noses right now as well guess it is just going around.
My second day at Ed Smith was positive, and I am glad to not hear anti-gay comments by the kids all the time. Mary Lynn said she hears it everyday, but I am glad to so far not be hearing it. The students are very well behaved in her classroom and engaged.
In one of the classes today one of the girls who has down syndrome had a birthday today. I kind of wished we could've sang happy birthday to her or thought when I get my own class and its someone's birthday perhaps we will work on making cards for that person during art. When I used to work for Syracuse Cultural Workers they always made really great collage birthday cards and think it would be something really nice for the kids to do for each other, something to look forward to doing and having done for you. Mary Lynn asked me to work with Gracie who has down syndrome on coloring a tertiary color wheel. She said she is very independent but should have someone with her 1 on 1. I explained to her that with the colored pencil she was supposed to color the color that was listed first, so if it said orange-yellow she had to put the orange down first or vice versa. She understood it and did it very well on her own. She told me it was her birthday and we talked and had a nice time working together.
In the 3rd grade class the kids are working on symbolism and made aluminum drawings that were colored and had texture drawn into them. They each picked different symbols and had to make an artist museum card with their name, title, date, and medium. They were stapled onto matt board that was donated from Commercial Art Supply. We glued them on the first day but stapled them today seemed to work better. The kids were working on free drawing while her and I called them up one by one to have them pick out the color matt board they wanted. Then we double checked their spelling and taped their artist card onto the back of the matt board hanging from underneath. Before they got to draw Mary Lynn talked to them about the meaning of their symbols and one boy told the class his was going to be called Heart Skates and was a present to his uncles fiance and explained that his uncle is getting married this month and told the class the date and said it is for his fiance because she takes him ice skating every weekend and that she was an olympian ice skater in the state of New York. He was so matter of fact about it and cute and sentimental. Another boy who came up to work with me had a symbol of a shield and it said safety. I asked him why he made a shield and he told me his grandfather was having surgery and that he made it for him to protect him. It was really endearing to see how sweet and thoughtful the kids were in their art making. I really liked that they did drawings of their symbols, then put them onto the aluminum, then put them onto matt board, then titled them and put that on. I talked to Mary Lynn about it and she said she thinks she does art projects slow which can lose some kids but that its important to her they get the concepts and are invested in the projects. I really picked up on that and feel I would be the same type of teacher. You really can't dive into an idea or concept in one class period. I would like to do things that have many levels, layers, and steps so there is a reward by the end and it shows the thought and time that goes into creating art. I also like that almost all the artwork gets to a finished point to have it hanging in the hallway or classroom. I overheard that their artwork is in one of the local hospitals and the 8th grade club is painting designs on the Newtimes newspaper holders. They have about 6 in their room that are in the process of getting painting.
Now that I'm settled into the school and only have two more weeks after this week I went over what I needed to have in my binder and saw I have to have written journal as well so have that in there, but need to start over with my unit plan and conceptual framework of the school for my candidate work sample. As part of that i have to have a unit plan that is five lessons. Because my placement got switched mid placement, I am not really able to carry that through with one group so I have to figure out how to write it for the first group I was working with or how to write it for the second group or how to combine the two. It requires a pre and post assessment which I did the pre assessment at the first placement and kind of saw how the art was turning out with the international flag, but didn't really get to do a post assessment. Either way I'm not really able to do it properly which stinks.
I also talked to Mary Lynn about which classes she'd like me to take over and she wants me to do K and 3rd grade with my own lessons for two weeks but really doesn't want me to take over the other classes since I'm only going to be there such a short period. She asked if I could see her do a lesson and try doing the same lesson with some of the other classes so they could stay on track with what they're doing. Some of her classes are in the middle of projects and obviously she didn't have any advance notice knowing I was coming.
She wants me to do 3rd grade on Friday and pick up K and 3rd next week so I told her I'd work on my ideas for those two classes tonight. She is very laid back and said no problem get it it if you can. We signed the contract of agreement for lesson plans and she just put do them ASAP since we don't have a lot of time and didn't care about stating a specific day ahead of time.
We also talked about my unit plan. At first I was going to do my Keith Haring lesson with the 3rd grade class which required I buy this scratch off paper at the art store, but when I told her about the unit plan idea she brainstormed ideas of how I could do the flag lesson with the kids and say write the first couple days that I didn't do with them but pick it up at the end and just do a part of the until plan with them, what I could fit in in two classes. She had the idea of making a classroom flag that represented their class. I really worked hard at Frazer to make the lessons for my 7th graders be catered to them specifically so feel I am somewhat getting thrown in with kids I don't know with little time to do that type of personalizing with the lessons, which really is what I would've preferred to do, but will make the best of it.
I am going to try to flesh out ideas tonight to see what would work best. The 3rd graders were doing symbolism so something with flags or my Keith Haring lesson would fit in, they are both on symbolism. I kind of want to do something different with them and do the Keith Haring lesson to elaborate on the symbols they were using. The lesson idea is to have them pick a symbol from a list of symbols I have as a hand out. Then they pick their favorite and put that symbol on a body as the head. Then they write about their symbol and describe it. It's a fun lesson especially with the paper and scratching the black off to reveal the color. We'll see how I figure out how to incorporate something into a unit plan and what makes sense with my two day lesson here.
Also in my Sage Student Teaching Folder I noticed that it says that I will work with my supervisor to do something with IEP on index cards. I asked Mary Lynn about it and she doesn't really want that information to be in my binder so we'll have to talk about that.
Lesson Plans, she is very relaxed about what she wants to see and gave me a handout and told me to fill it out with pencil what I'm doing and doesn't want to see the Sage formatted lesson so I will just do that for my binder and fill out the info she wants for her to see.
Thanks for reading.
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