Author Archive for Margaret Brill

Paul Franzowiak, Menomonee Falls, Wi., is a Secondary Education Major with an emphasis in Mathematics. After tutoring friends in math, he was inspired to become a teacher. He will have a full 18 week placement at Maplewood Middle School in Menasha.

I feel like it’s been several weeks since I last blogged for the COEHS and my time at Maplewood is still flying by. Next weekend at this time I will be an alumni of the  University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. I look back and still can remember my first day of college classes and soon enough it will all end. I feel this exact same way with my student teaching placement. I remember walking in my first day and I’m now only a few short weeks of completing my student teaching.

I’ve started to observe other teachers and see how their teaching styles differ from mine. I’ve taken away many different tips, tricks, and words of wisdom from those who know their students and curriculum very well. I know that when I become a full-time teacher I won’t be given many of these opportunities to see other teachers, so I’m trying to get into as many classrooms as possible. I was also able to attend the Green Lake Math Conference this past week and experience many different techniques other teachers around the state are using. This was a good experience to help me stay current with different teaching practices and the ability to see how well these new techniques are working. I took away a lot from this conference and hope to attend it for many years to come.

A couple weekends ago, I ran in the Oshkosh Half Marathon. The next day I shared with the students that I took part in this event and wore a specialty made shirt that I wore during the race. I shared with the students the importance and meaning behind the things on the shirt. After this day, I feel that many of the students started to look at me differently. We were able to relate on a different level and they were able to see a different side of me. I haven’t shared many stories about my life outside of the classroom and being able to share these kinds of stories and sharing parts of my life have gone a long way. This story impacted a few of the students so much that they actually made me a giant card and gave me a balloon that congratulated me on finishing the race and going through this time in my life. I was not expecting anything like this and it really opened my eyes to how much the students and I have grown over the past semester.

Paul Franzowiak, Menomonee Falls, Wi., is a Secondary Education Major with an emphasis in Mathematics. After tutoring friends in math, he was inspired to become a teacher. He will have a full 18 week placement at Maplewood Middle School in Menasha.

Spring break has come and gone, I can’t believe that it’s already April 5^th. The time and the days seem to be going faster and faster as the semester goes on. Many other student teachers have started their new placements and I’m still continuing mine. I’m very interested to see how these next nine or so weeks go. I’m so excited to be graduating in the next couple weeks and move onto having a full-time job.

Some days I wish I had the opportunity to student teach in a high school setting to compare the differences in the age groups. I often find myself repeating many of the directions I give the students and having to discipline students more than I would like to. I feel that having to deal with some of these issues hold us back from moving forward in our material. However, we keep pushing through the material and moving forward to try and get through everything by the end of the year. This week we tried out a few new teaching ideas and got the kids moving around in the classroom. Many of the students were very enthusiastic about this opportunity and willing to participate more. Not only does this help create an authentic learning experience, but makes teaching that much easier and enjoyable. It was also nice to have this experience to relate back to in later lessons. Creating these types of experiences aren’t easy for teachers, but are well worth the time and effort when a teacher sees how much knowledge the students have learned.

Since I have done a lot of full-time teaching over the past few weeks, my co-operating teacher and I have started to try out co-teaching with each other. Since neither of us has had many opportunities to do this, we thought it would be a good time to try it out. We know how each other teacher and play off each other very well. It may be a different way of thinking or saying something out loud that gives he students a different view point throughout the lesson. The more we do it, the more we find the positives and negatives about this teaching style. If given the opportunity, I would definitely recommend trying out this type of teaching style. It’s something new and different and this may be the only time I ever get to do this.

Jennifer Backes,  from South Milwaukee, is majoring in Music Education with an emphasis on Instrumental and General Education. Her inspiration to become a teacher comes from long line of educators and a desire to spread her passion of music to others  Her 18-week placement is broken down by the first 9-weeks at Rosenow Elementary in Fond du Lac, and the second at Merrill and Webster-Stanley Middle Schools in Oshkosh.

Wow.  It is hard to believe that I have completed my first placement of student teaching.  It seems like yesterday when I sang my song of introduction to all of my kids back in January!  Has nine weeks really come and gone?  Yes it has.

My third through fifth graders had their Pirate concert and I couldn’t be more proud of them for how well it went!  Every student had some sort of fun pirate outfit/costume on and it was the cutest sight to behold!  My third graders were performing first so we were all on stage when the principal welcomed the audience.  He then introduced me as the “amazing student teacher” and presented me with a beautiful bouquet of flowers!  I was so touched and thankful for such a wonderful sentiment that I couldn’t stop smiling.  And then I really couldn’t stop when I led my kids in their songs and they did an outstanding job!  They remembered everything I had told and taught them and did even better than I could have imagined!  I was so proud of each and every one of them that I couldn’t help but get a bit emotional when they came up to me afterwards to hug and thank me.

The fourth and fifth graders performed their Pirates Musical next and they too did an amazing job!  They all had their lines memorized and I only needed to prompt one student.  There was even a part where a few kids got to run around in the audience which everybody loved!  But all of the songs and speaking parts were so good and many people complimented us on such a fantastic concert!

Words cannot even begin to explain what an incredible journey it has been.  My cooperating teacher was easily the best elementary music teacher I have ever observed!  She was so organized and extremely helpful throughout my whole time of being there.  Definitely an excellent inspiration and someone I will certainly be remaining in touch with.  She and I are practically the same person and we would even joke around and say that we were twins separated from birth.  Everything from our personality, to our organization, and to our styles of teaching were so similar that even the kids would laugh!

Not only will I miss her but I will miss every single one of my kids as well.  We all bonded really well and I was basically a crying mess on my last day as I kept getting tackled by kids hugging me with teary eyes.  I am so thankful for this experience and for being able to not only touch many students’ lives but to have them touch mine as well.  One successful placement is complete and now my nerves are back again as I prepare for my next placement with middle school orchestra!

Samantha Hessel, from Maribel WI. She will be licensed Special Education Cross Categorical Middle Childhood through Adolescence with an emphasis in learning disabilities, Autism Spectrum Disorders Certificate, and a Spanish minor. Her 18-week placement is taking place at Shattuck Middle School.

To begin with, I always thought I could prepare for the classroom and student teaching through my classes. This last week it truly hit me, NOTHING could truly prepare me for this except actually being in the classroom full time. These kids are my kids and I feel responsible for their education. There are not enough hours in the day to teach them everything I need to, which breaks my heart. But tomorrow I will get up again and try because there are break through moments where you feel you have truly connected with a student. There are other moments you could pull your hair out because they just do not understand what you are teaching them and it is so frustrating to know you haven’t done your job. This is what being a real life teacher is like.

In other words, I absolutely love my placement. The kids are great and I have a great team that I work with because that is what we are, a team. I am co-teaching with another student teacher from UW Oshkosh, along with both of our cooperating teachers. There are two educational aids that work with my kiddos and another specific learning disabilities teacher. We work together to provide the best we can. As I am writing this I am thinking of everything that goes on in the school day and how constant communication is key. My cooperating teacher created a binder for me when I came to the school and in her first paragraph she used the quote “It takes a whole village to raise a child” and she is absolutely right. Thursday one of our educational aids was home sick and it was tough without her because she had knowledge about classroom assignments that we didn’t.

Developing as a co-teacher has started off on a positive note I feel. I am lucky enough to have a co-teacher who wants to share the classroom with me and wants me to be an active part of the class, not just another person in the classroom monitoring behavior or taking on the role as an aid. In the beginning I took on a more of a secondary role, letting him be the leader. He spoke up and gave me the push I needed to become more of an active role in the classroom. We take on the challenges together and brainstorm how we can make things better or what needs changing.

I am teaching two sections of a reading mediation class and three sections of co taught eighth grade language arts. One of the things that drew me to special education was the fact I would be working on real life skills with my kiddos and not just one specific content area because I didn’t have a passion for one. I am drawn to academics and application of real life skills. Since I am teaching kids with learning disabilities I am working more with academics. Today proved I will be forever learning. Since I only teach language arts I do not attend any other classes with my kiddos. Not only do I miss out on that information, but my kiddos have a wide variety of teachers because they are included in the classroom. I had to quickly grasp the material in order to be able to assist my kids with their assignments. That was one of the most frustrating moments in this placement. I cannot be everywhere with my kids and I just have to help them the best that I can.