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Being a reflective practitioner is a signature characteristic of effective teachers. This semester, you'll hone your reflective skills by writing about your teaching life each day via a blog post, right here on Red Hot Teaching '12.

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Monday, August 27, 2012

I am happy to say that my first day of fourth grade was a good one. As I arrived at school this morning, I was filled with excitement and anxiety about the unknown. I imagine some of the students in my class felt the same way! The halls were filled with energy as students began to enter the building and find their rooms. I started my day by helping students in the hallway find lockers and put away their supplies. It was so nice to meet and talk with all of them as they came in! I am still trying to remember all of their names, but I think I know most of them. It is difficult to learn 35 in one day. Along with learning names, I tried to learn about the culture of the school. I was surprised by the fact that walking in quiet, straight lines was not as heavily enforced at this school as I have seen it be in others. It was also surprising how fast the day went by. It seemed like I had just arrived and it was already time to go home. I am looking forward to the rest of the week and getting to know the students in my class better! It will be interesting to learn about each of their personality types. I hope day two goes as smoothly as day one.
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1 comment:

  1. Suzy Kaback & FamilyAugust 28, 2012 at 6:01 PM

    Hi Nicole,

    Did you notice that you and Meggie had some similar reactions to your first day? You both mentioned being nervous (no surprise there—nerves come with the teaching territory. I’ll bet all three of you even had “teacher dreams” in the days leading up to the first day); you also both mentioned how quickly the day passed. What I expected to read from one of you was a comment about how hot the school is! Maybe I’m just a wimp, but when I worked at LHUS last fall, in Ms. Liepitz’s classroom, I remember it being quite toasty. Nice in November, not so great in August ☺

    Anyway, I’m glad your first day went well. Learning student names is so important, but with 35 kids, it’s also a big challenge. You’ll probably be surprised by how quickly you learn everyone’s name, and when you have your own classroom some day, you might even develop some tricks for matching names with faces before they even arrive in class for the first day.

    If you’re curious, here’s one site with some tips for name-learning. The first few are pretty standard, but some of the ideas farther down the list are clever.

    http://k6educators.about.com/od/backtoschoollessons/a/Ways-To-Learning-Students-Names-Quickly.htm

    Thanks for posting.

    SK

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