Taking Over

On my final two days of field experience I had the opportunity to teach multiple lessons. The teacher I was working with took Thursday and Friday off to go hunting, leaving us with two different substitutes. On the first day I ran the morning meeting, read a book and ran class discussions about the book. I also had the privilege of teaching math both days. In those two days I learned more than I learned this whole semester. There is nothing like first-hand experience.

On the first day, no-one wanted to be the bad guy. This made the students a little rowdy and talkative. The substitute teacher only told the students to be quiet. On second day I decided to give out warnings and give them choices between behaving and losing privileges (recess in the morning and free time in the afternoon). This made the whole day run more smoothly. The students listened and completed their work. I got through everything left on the sub notes. It was a great lesson for me in classroom management. Even though I dislike taking away recess, it is what they are accustomed to losing for misbehavior. I had to stick with the management style their usual teacher used and it worked. Only warnings were issued and no one had to lose recess, thankfully.