No More Substitute Teachers

I learned this week that it is at times very difficult to be a student teacher and work with substitute teachers in the classroom. My teacher was sick this week and I have not begun to take full control of the classroom yet, but have control of some subjects. I found that it was very difficult on myself and the children having different substitute teachers in and out of the classroom all week. Every teacher has their own pedagogy and way of doing things in the classroom, and I think it was difficult on both the kids and I this week. The children were clinging to me because I was something familiar. Routines make children feel safe and their routines were definitely disrupted this week and it has been difficult to get back on track. I tried speaking with the subs about how we do things but most of them did not care and just did what they wanted. It was frustrating to me that my opinion and my ways of teaching were not taken into consideration. I feel like in a few months I will be graduated and I know how to teach and I am a good teacher and I found it very difficult to work with these substitute teachers that would not listen to what I had to say.

I taught a writing lesson today and it went very well and the students really enjoyed it. I taught them how to do a noisy story, and tomorrow we are going to share our stories with the class. I had them working in teams to create the stories and this was a difficult task for them. There have been some difficulties in the class of children not working together so I decided a teamwork task would be a great way for different groups of children to work together to achieve a common goal. It took a great big discussion about what teamwork is and what it looks like but it finally got through to them and they worked very well together.