Today my classroom teacher was in the room all day. It was nice to have her back because the kids calmed down considerably with her there. We had our 3rd of four benchmark conferences and I am fairly sure I will be passing student teaching, which is a good feeling to have. We went over some of my portfolio stuff and I feel pretty good about that too.
I have recess duty this week and it has been nice to get outside for a little bit during the day. I think outside recess duty is one of my favorite responsibilities because I get to be outside in the sun and I get to spend time with my students. I often feel like I do not spend enough time getting to know them and talking to them. Recess duty allows me to talk with the kids who want to talk to me and it is nice to be hugged so much too!
Today at recess I had to deal with a student hitting another student. I made him sit out the rest of recess. He tried to run away from me but I eventually got to him and made him sit out. I felt a little silly chasing him around the playground so I eventually stopped and when I saw him again I went over and made him sit. My teacher suggested a slightly different approach when I asked her what I should have done. She gave some other good suggestions during the conference that I intend to put into practice over the next few weeks.
Even though making this student sit out was a major part of the day, it was overshadowed by the absolute kindness of a few of my students. At recess, four students picked my dandelions. They brought them up individually with the biggest smiles on their faces. Two of the students were ones that do things like this often but two of them were ones I did not expect this kind of behavior from. They were all so happy just to how me these flowers and each time they brought more I pulled all of the flowers out of my pockets to show them how many I had.
Little moments like that, where everyone’s day is made by the simplest of things, are one of the reasons I love working with kids so much. It was nice to be reminded of that with a pocket full of dandelions.
The View from Student Teaching 