Journal Entry #3

The fifth week of my student teaching resulted in me taking more responsibility over the
classroom. I had two different administrators, the school’s principal and vice principal, observe
my Language Arts lessons. An aspect I continued to struggle with during this time was my time
management capabilities. I would tend to drag out the length of my lessons due to nervousness
and the concern for all students to achieve understanding before moving on to the next subject.
Ms. Crichton and I worked on this aspect by having me set timers during my lessons, studying
assessments to make sure I cut out certain aspects of lessons that aren’t necessary for my class’s
growth, and pulling small groups of students who still don’t understand the content.
My sixth week in teaching included handling complicated student issues such as
bullying, harassment, gossip, and parent communication. Because these issues were so delicate,
Ms. Crichton assisted me with handling these certain situations. The bullying resulted in students
constructing a song taunting one of their classmates. The students would spread rumours over
who first constructed the song and it came to the point where Ms. Crichton and I planned to
implement a lesson on the consequences of rumours and excluding their classmates.
As for the harassment situation, a male student had consistently bothered a female student
by spreading rumors that she was his girlfriend, bribing her with money to be his girlfriend, and
not leaving her alone when asked. The best course of action that was taken was a meeting held
with the girl, girl’s mother, Ms. Crichton, the vice principal, and myself. Throughout the
meeting, the girl could discuss freely what was going on with the boy and her mother could
express her concerns. After the meeting, the result came to setting boundaries with the boy and
taking no further action unless there was another occurrence.
There was also a situation of a disgruntled parent. This particular parent’s child had many
behavioral issues in our classroom including a particular incident during recess, with two
children getting into a heated argument. Since the two children were able to resolve the situation
calmly with my guidance, I did not punish either student. However, the student was worried that
his parents would be notified, so I assured the student that I would contact his mother and tell her
the situation was resolved between the two boys. With Ms. Crichton’s permission, I was able to
contact the mother through Class Dojo. What I expected to be a polite discussion with a parent
turned into the parent sending angry message claiming that school was picking on her child and
the other child should have been punished. A second attempt to reason with the parent, also
given permission by Ms. Crichton before the message was sent, resulted in the parent continuing
to provide provocations. Instead of instigating the situation further, I stopped replying to the
parent, as this deep rooted conflict had not involved my authority over the student any longer,
and referred her back to Ms. Crichton. This situation had began to prepare me with how to
handle situations when parents try to argue with how the school is being run, and hopefully, I
will be able to provide more reassuring words when it is my own classroom.
The verse that has given me encouragement these past two weeks was James 1:2-4
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because
you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work
so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” These past two weeks have
filled me with a lot of stress from taking full responsibility of the classroom, working on time
management, writing lesson plans, and trying to balance school, work, and a home life as well.
However, I know that this experience is preparing me for the full experience of teaching and I
should embrace this opportunity as a growing point in my journey to constructing my own
classroom. The Lord only puts trials in our life so we may know and accomplish all to our full
potential.