Teaching Mastery

First off, I LOVE teaching. My subject matter, Cosmetology, is my passion, my hobby and my job. I feel so very fortunate to be teaching something that I feel this strongly about. I strive to get this point accross to my students even through the boring mundane tasks of theory work. I feel that I will be working towards this mastery of teaching until the day I retire. I don't think you can truly master something that is constantly changing. For me, the challenge is one that I welcome and enjoy. One of the big changes I have noticed this year after being in NTI, is that I can knock out a lesson plan like nobodys business! I feel that these lessons are much more interesting and appropriate for the differing needs of my students. In looking back on my first year teaching (last year) I find lessons that I wrote and kind of chuckle to myself. They were definately not up to my standards now. So I have been rewriting and tweeking them. I am sure that I will do this every year but that it will get less and less involved with each passing year.
Another area that I have made great strides in is my classroom management. This one area alone has made a huge difference in how my school day goes. I feel that my students like coming to my class and enjoy most of the lessons, but they seem to respect me also. I didn't feel this level of respect last year. I had ongoing battles with the same students. Oh to have them again, I know just what I would do! To wrap this up, I feel very fortunate to have a job at all, and blessed to have one that I love so much.

Survey

Finally! I finally just sat down, took my time and got my campus email to work. I had 118 emails that I had to sort through! I also FINISHED the survey. Thank you for you help Dr. M.

Portfolio

Some of the topics of the portfolio seem more appropriate and easier for me than others. I am still having a difficult time coming up with something for this week. I have been trying to get my information together for this topic and am still not sure what direction I will go in. The end results of this portfolio will be very beneficial I am sure. It will be great to have all of this information together in case I ever need to show it to someone. It also helps to go back over old lessons and see how they will fit into this portfolio and in doing so, I have found some revisions I would like to make. Our school is having us do benchmark exams every 6 weeks and this is stressing me out to have so much to do for class and school. I am having a hard time feeling like my brain is "fresh". Thus the difficulty in coming up with the direction I need to go in. I don't want to sound so negative because I definately see the merit to the portfolio. A mental break would be wonderful right now! (note that was break, not break down :)).

Elluminate

Elluminate is an excellent progam for a course that doesn't require lots of hands on activities. In my opinion it works very well with courses that are mainly lecture and discussion based. I see Elluminate being used successfully in a history course where the instructor uses lots of power point presentations and relys heavily on lecture to share their information with their class. Using other programs such as ULearn where a student can turn-in assignments to the instructor would broaden the effectiveness of this class. I could see it being successful with Foreign Language instruction. For maximum effectiveness I feel that Elluminate is for the adult learner. It requires discipline and a degree of responsibility that the average high school student does not have. Testing would be very difficult to accomplish with this program as there could be a high level of cheating. I think that Elluminate is made for the purpose that we are using it for at NTI. I am enjoying this program as it is freeing up some time for me that I need to spend with my family, job etc... It is an excellent program.

Interview

I think it is a wonderful idea to interview faculty from different positions at school. I am looking forward to interviewing one of our counselors to get an insight into what she deals with daily. I have spoken with the different counselors many times with student issues. But I know they do a lot more than just put out fires! My youngest daughter is a junior this year at the school I work at and she has an interest in counseling. So this interview will serve dual purpose. Perhaps the information I gain will help her also in her quest for a career. It is also my hope that this interview will help me to better understand my students and their issues. I am sure that the counselors have a totally different take on my students than I do.

Lavoie

THe two Lavoie videos have made quite an impact on me. Not only in how I view my special needs students, but also my typical peers and my own children. THe last video especially spoke to me. The explination of what is an adolescent was profound to me. It really made me stop and revisit situations from the past. This explination that adolescents spend 24 hours a day doing anything to keep from being embarrassed made incidents really make sense. As we have learned in NTI it is important to take the audience away from the misbehaving student. This student will do anything to take the embarassing attention away from them and put it onto the teacher. THey need to be in control. I also better understand the "no sarcasm" rule when dealing with teenagers. Sarcasm puts them in an embarrassing situation and they are likely to lash out. I truly enjoyed both videos.

Jayna First week blog

What has worked well for me; My favorite things that I have learned at NTI this summer were the classroom management skills. I absolutely love and have had remarkable success with my students repeating back to me what they are going to do before they begin the new task. I also have had wonderful success with my newfound student interaction strategies. Just today I had a situation with a student that could have escalated to the point where I would have needed help. Instead of letting this happen, I took her aside and used the "to you to me" speach and she really went to work on the task I had assigned. It was amazing!

What I have had trouble with; A big issue I have had this year is absenteeism. On an average day I have about 6 students in ISS. These seem to be the same students and they are missing out on so much in the class. This is very frustrating to me. I decided today that I would take them aside as they came back to class and discuss whatever behavior they are choosing that keeps getting them into ISS. Then I thougth that we would try to work on some strategies to help them stop the behavior. We will see if it works!