Caitlyn Padgett

Student Teaching Seminar

Doctor Casebeer

27 October 2019

Reflection Journal 9

Challenging but not impossible. These have been the words that I have repeatedly told

myself this week. My past two weeks in this classroom, have been a time for growth as an

educator and it has been a difficult time of growth. This week was one of the most mentally

exhausting weeks that I have had in a long time. On Monday night, I cried for my students

because I could not fathom the behaviors that I was witnessing. I was unable to comprehend

how students could go from working well to shutting down and not being able to function in the

classroom. Another thing that I was struggling with was determining an appropriate way to react

to these behaviors. Am I able to take away privileges that are given to them? If I can, which

privileges do I take away first and which privileges do I allow them to earn back? The most

difficult part is that I am watching how smoothly my cooperating teacher handles the behaviors

but then I take a step back and realize she has been doing this for much longer with years of

experience. My cooperating teacher also knows the triggers of her students and she knows the

most effective techniques for each child. While this is only my second week, I have to

constantly remind myself that I am still learning and I am not expected to have the knowledge

that my cooperating teacher has because that will come with time and experience in the

classroom.

One day from this past week that sticks out to me the most is Wednesday. On Wednesday, we

had a student come down to our room with anger in his eyes. When he came into the room, he
immediately began to freak out. He was screaming about how stupid he thought the math

intervention was that he had to attend. Then he began to throw his headphones around the room.

Mrs. Harvey asked the student to stop because she told him that he was going to break the

headphones. The student told Mrs. Harvey that she could not tell him what to do with his

headphones since they were his. As the student was saying this to Mrs. Harvey, she walked up

to the student and asked the student to give her his headphones. He yelled in her face, so she

began to apply force to his hands to remove the headphones before another student got hurt.

When Mrs. Harvey had finally gained control of the headphones, she set them in her back room

and the student began to walk laps around her classroom as he progressively grew angrier. The

student then took off his sweatshirt and began to hit the hanging decorations in the classroom and

when Mrs. Harvey asked him to stop he told her that she could not control what he did. She

went over to take the jacket from him and he resisted; after several warnings and privileges being

threatened to be lost the student gave up control of the jacket. When he released his jacket he

proceeded to try and flip one of the tables in our room. Mrs. Harvey began to question if the

child had taken his medication that morning and he proceeded to say that he dumped all of his

medicine down the drain. After the child told us this, Mrs. Harvey called his mom and she said

that he was lying. When Mrs. Harvey hung up the phone, the child immediately began to cry.

He walked over to her and apologized for what he had done; at this moment my eyes filled with

tears. All the rage that was built up in this child had left his body and he knew what he had done

was wrong. This made my heart drop because when he came into the classroom, he could not

handle what he was doing but after his anger had left he knew he was wrong.

This piece has been the hardest part of emotional support because usually after the students are

finished being upset they know what they did was unacceptable. However, it is helping the child
get to the point where they can realize that the anger they are about to have is not worth letting

out because the problem can be easily solved. While I have been observing all the techniques

that my cooperating teacher has been using, my heart aches for each of these students because I

know that they are unable to control their emotions at that moment. Mrs. Harvey has done an

excellent job of helping the students use coping strategies for their emotions after something has

happened but she is still working towards helping them recognize that what they are frustrated

with can be handled after they take a deep breath. Her students are trying but when their anger

takes over they cannot think rationally.