No Mentor Day

I had the class all to myself today.  My mentor teacher had to stay out with his sick child so I was in charge of the whole day. I think when it came down to it, the only things that really worried me were the non-teaching issues. I had to make out a checklist of all the other little things to do like attendance, lunch count, Thursday folders, knowing where the Epi-pen is, and getting the kids from place to place on time. Those were the things in the back of my mind causing me to be slightly worrisome throughout the day. Oh, not to mention getting everyone on the right bus when there were bus number changes.

But as I said, the non-teaching things were what gave me the most stress. As far as teaching goes, things went pretty well. It was actually the first time I have led taught fifth grade math, and it was interesting doing it with plans that I had never seen before. I know I probably didn’t do a great job because I couldn’t think of enough critical thinking and follow questions on the spot, but for the circumstances, I think I did fairly well. Also, a teacher who usually pulls kids out for ELT just pushed in and gave me some assistance for that period, which was nice. The kicker though, was that she has been pushing in to lead writing instruction, but she informed me that she had an IEP meeting to go to, and I would be doing her writing lesson, which I got to look at during the transition from ELT to writing.

Another interesting part of the day was that my voice has been growing more and more hoarse over the past few days. So, it was a little tough doing all the lead teaching for most of the day. On top of that, we had an assembly at the end of the day in which the teachers, myself included, performed a play about the character work of the month. My character was “The Proclaimer,” and if the name is as leading as it sounds, I was indeed making proclamations; very loud proclamations. My voice is now shot. It was all great fun and worth it though. The play was hilarious and portrayed the message of “acceptance” very well.