Observation the First Days of School

EDCI 4744/5744

You are to spend as much time as you can in your cooperating teacher’s classroom the first five weeks of school. This is to be determined by your schedule and you cooperating teacher’s good will. There are several tasks you should accomplish during the first days. They are as follows:

  1. Set up an appointment to meet your cooperating teacher. Arrange a time convenient to your coop and be there. At this meeting try to obtain the school schedule(s), your teaching assignments, the texts you will be using, and any additional information that you can get about the school and mathematics in the school.
  2. Determine as best you can what the goals of your cooperating teacher are. Why does s/he do what s/he does? What does s/he hope students are learning? Write a brief description of what you think your coop’s goals are. Write a brief statement of you own goals. Share both statements with your coop, if you feel comfortable doing this.
  3. As soon as the class roles are stable and seating charts are established, get seating charts. Begin learning student names and making notes to yourself about students. Share your thoughts with the coop – begin to get some feel for students’ personalities and develop some sense of how you should interact with the students. Are there shy students? Dominant students? Who will challenge you? Who could be helpful to you if s/he were on your side? Cultivate student respect now.
  4. Learn the school rules and the rules of the classroom! If the school or the coop does not allow gum chewing, don’t ignore it when you begin to teach. Work on noticing things as you observe. It will be difficult to keep track of things once you start to teach. Learn what your coop does to enforce rules and discuss what you plan to do.
  5. Begin to learn what resources are available in the school. Ask you cooperating teacher, talk to the librarian. Talk to some of the other math teachers. Maybe find out what science classes your students are in and learn what topics are being taught there. It’s a good source of applications.
  6. Make yourself useful. Put up bulletin boards. Bring in problems. Offer to grade papers – it’s a good way to see what students know and don’t know before you get there.
  7. Participate in school life. Go to the boy’s basketball games, girl’s volleyball games, or the track meets. Go to the choir or band concerts. Students will see you there and it will make big difference in the way they think of you. Teachers who support student activities are teachers who care about students as well as subject matter.
  8. Get as much sleep as you can. You need to be healthy and rested the next 15 weeks. Don’t try to do anything else but be a student teacher this semester!