Day One

My first day with power teaching was awesome! I stayed on the strategies, kicked a few old bad habits (like repeating myself), and my kids had fun. Teach-OK was a little rough at the beginning, but we reviewed the expectations, and by the end of the day almost all the students were doing well with it. I even did a few gesture mirroring exercises, which I hadn't intended to attempt at first.

Looking back at the plan I made, I actually did everything from Tuesday and Wednesday, and I didn't feel overwhelmed or like I was overwhelming the kids at all. It all was actually pretty easy. I found teaching from the board came pretty easily, and the times that I was still in the back by the computer/document camera I was able to keep up the power teaching just fine (though I was always losing my stupid white board marker; "It's Cool").

My biggest challenge in this class is a student named Eduardo (not really, I'm not using real student names in the blog of course). Eduardo had been home-schooled for a few years before joining my class this year, and has great difficulty following routines and listening to directions. He still had many issues today (he held up the speed of most of the routines, and had to be reminded individually of what to do sometimes, though I tried to avoid this; the kids reminded him pretty well), but I'm pretty sure I saw some improvements. I have high hopes for him. He's very smart, and not at all rude or disrespectful, just difficult to keep focused on class activities.