Day 22

Today was the first day in which I became the primary teacher and taught all of the classes. I have been nervous for this day, but it actually went really well. In fact, I really enjoyed it and found today to be one of the best days of my elementary student teaching experience. I have found that I often feel better when I’m teaching all of the classes and will enjoy the day more as it seems to go by more quickly and enjoyably. I think that this is odd since I stress out and worry about taking over. Hopefully, this will be an enjoyable week since I should be teaching all of the classes this week.

I also feel that my teaching was successful and effective. I am really feeling like I can be an effective elementary art teacher. I expressed my confidence to my cooperating teacher, and she agreed stating that she has no hesitations on my becoming an elementary art teacher and that I am doing fine in her classroom. She stated that she doesn’t really have any suggestions for improvements for me and that I’ll do most of my improving when I actually take on a teaching position. “You’re just at the point where you need to jump in and start,” she said. “I think you’re done with Student Teaching; I don’t think there’s much more you can learn.”

Today was the first day of S.T.A.A.R. Testing this week, and the first day of crazy schedule changes. The schedule is going to be greatly changed tomorrow and the next day, so today we just had Kindergarten switched with the 5th Grade class. We also didn’t have lunch duty, so we had an extended lunch period and I was able to create teacher-made examples for the 3rd and 5th grade class optical illusions lesson plans.

I feel like the 3rd grade optical illusion is a little challenging. I don’t feel that it’s too advanced for them, but it requires a planning and critical thinking. In order to complete the optical illusion, students have to draw several lines on their paper in order to create several interesting shapes. They are then supposed to color in each shape in a way in which no two colors are touching each other, similar to a checkerboard pattern. Today we had several students struggling with the coloring and messing up. They’re finding ways to figure it out or work around their mistakes, though, and that’s what art is all about!