Week 7 Reflection

This week has been a great learning experience for me. I have become more comfortable with the routine of things and it has allowed me the opportunity to focus on classroom management and lesson details that I may have overlooked before. I also received feedback from a liason observation this week, which was very helpful.
This was spirit week at the school and it was fun to see everyone dress up each day. I really like the atmosphere of school spirit that they have here because it is something that I can honestly say I never had in high school. I rode in the homecoming parade with FCA on Wednesday and it was great to see my students outside of class. I really enjoyed getting to know some of them better by spending this time with them. Homecoming is tomorrow night and I am going to chaperone so I am sure that I will get to know more about them than I ever wanted to! It should be a good time though.
In forensics this week I learned a lot about the importance of having organized structured labs. In order for the students to get to do a lot of hands-on activities I have to be willing to come early to set up and stay late to clean up. It really makes everything run smoothly if all of their materials are ready to go when they arrive to class. I also need to make sure that they have very specific instructions both written and orally. We finished up the hair analysis unit today and I finished collecting the data for my action research on this lab. They all scored very well on their quizzes and I gathered some good observational data.
Anatomy has been great all week, until class today. We finished up chapter 5 part 1 this week and I even had 2 full days of class to do in-class enhancement activities and reviews. I have made a lot of adjustments to the lectures for this chapter to help them learn it better. I feel like i've really presented the material well, and yet so many of them still don't know it. During today's test review students just complained about the review game and because they didn't know the answers to the questions. I wish they realized how much help they are missing out on by not paying attention or blowing it off. I am beginning to see that the students who want to do well will and those who don't care about their grades won't pay attention no matter what I do or how I present it. I try not to take it personally when they don't remember things that we've talked about a million times, but it's hard not to still feel responsible. I am going to finish writing the test this weekend and I hope that they remember to study and aren't as shocked on Tuesday as they were during the review today!
I try to remind myself that it is their loss if they refuse to pay attention but I always feel like there has to be something more I can do. I plan on spending some time evaluating my practices this weekend and making sure that I am doing everything possible to help my students succeed. I am definitely willing to try new ideas and make adjustments if I think it will help them in some way. I guess this is a task that is never finished as a teacher! I'll report back soon about any changes and how students are responding!