Weekly Review #12

Well, it's over. I really can't believe I'm at this point. There were times this day seemed so far away and at times unachievable. In terms of this week, I felt good about it overall. There was one day, Wednesday, that I was a little frustrated with the way the 7th grade music class went, but even then I can't expect perfect days all the time. Having the OAT going on made things interesting and much slower, but after 11 weeks that were very hectic for me, having a slower, more mellow week wasn't too bad. The main downside was that the choirs had less practices this week because of the testing schedule, so going into the Spaghetti Dinner Concert, I think all of us felt a little less prepared than we would've like to have been.

I felt very confident in the general music classes, though having each class alternate with Mr. Suzelis helped a lot. Seeing his teaching style again gave me some more pointers. While I had my fair share of observation hours leading up to this, now that I have actual experience teaching, there are a lot more things I actually take note of when seeing another teacher teach. What I noticed more this time was how he organized information in the general music classes and what he emphasized in a particular lesson. Seeing this again with the perspective I now have helped me to streamline my own lessons so they fit in with his better and kept the material going. My biggest challenge was 7th grade general music because while I enjoyed the students' different personalities, it was actually a pretty volatile class with the potential to spiral out of control in a hurry. There were times I felt like I was almost at that point with them, so keeping things moving without going too fast and losing some of the students was always something I was trying to balance.

I have learned a lot from student teaching overall, and have taken a lot of good ideas away from Mr. Suzelis. Did I agree with everything he did? Of course not, but that's not the issue really. He brings a large amount of experience and expertise and perspective that I cannot compete with or things that without the experience I could not possibly understand or know. I had to learn to sit back and just try things a different way sometimes along with just trial by error. I think Mr. Suzelis tried to let me learn by experience to a degree, but certainly not all the time.

And I really did enjoy all of my students...what a great group of students!