BLOG ONE

“Write about 2 things that are going well in your classroom that you are proud of.  Write about 2 things in your classroom that you wish to improve.  What steps will you take to improve these items?"

The biggest thing that I am proud of so far this school year is that I am creating good relationships with my students.  When the school year started I had trouble connecting with my kids and getting to know them on a more personal level.  However, as the semester has progressed I feel like I have become closer with my students and know more about their interests and there seems to be better classroom culture in general.  Another thing I am proud of is specific students who I have worked a lot with and have improved.  I have several students who have come to tutoring a lot and I have been able to work closely with and I have seen their grades improve quite a bit.

I most want to improve my classroom management.  I have really struggled with getting my students to not talk while I am talking.  I feel like I spend so much time yelling at them to be quiet, and I know I have wasted so much time doing this.  I have tried a lot of different things to improve this so I am not exactly sure what to do at this point.  But this week I have a TFA staff member coming in to specifically look at my classroom management and to work one-on-one with me, so I am hoping this will help me out.
I also hope to improve the overall scores of my students.  While some students that I have worked closely with have improved, my classes as a whole are not improving very much.  I have started to try to improve this by taking more time on topics that confuse students.  Before I stuck to a schedule that I had planned out for each unit, but often students would not understand a topic and I would just move on.  I am trying to be more responsive to my students' understanding.