Dear Diary,

Speaking (or writing) of diaries, in class today, one of the girls was writing a diary entry from a character from A Raisin in the Sun and she wrote "Dear Dairy." I giggled a little and let her know about it.
So today I started practicum in my school, AMY Northwest. It's a magnet school which means they can discriminate based on intelligence; the funny thing is that even though it's the "smart kids" they still have special ed. It's a small school, only 250 kids and three grades (6th-8th), and 15 teachers on staff.
I began in Ms. Green's English class, and today we had all seventh graders. They were not well-behaved - they walked around, talked to each other, turned and faced the back wall. But honestly I really didn't mind because they kept me on my toes, and I'd rather have that than a perfect class. My co-op is a beautiful black woman who makes me think of a younger Maya Angelou and has hair like Ntozake Shange. She has the most amazing reading voice - so soothing. I was actually very surprised to see the the students didn't really respect her; because of her grand appearance, I thought that she would get automatic appreciation. But she really didn't have control of the classroom unfortunately. I think that the problem is that she doesn't really follow up on rewards or discipline, and she knows that. We planned to sit down this week and discuss some kind of rewards option for them, like a points system. I think she's really excited for me to be in her class because she knows that she's lagging a little and she's excited for my newness, idealism, and creativity. Unfortunately, I'm unfamiliar with all the literature that we're reading (A Raisin in the Sun, Hercules, and Bridge to Terabithia) so I have to do lots of reading before I can really teach anything.
I am more excited to teach the classes after meeting them. I feel very knowledgeable: today as they were doing a worksheet, I was able to explain the word "pseudonym" and help them to figure out what it meant without giving the answer. I feel like a lot of methods that I learned from Mrs. Gleason have really been helpful in this setting; walking around the classroom and showing proximity has shown the students that they need to buckle down and won't get away with copying down the answers at the end. It gives them more one-on-one attention as well, and I think that I've been able to build rapport with them by walking around and helping them individually. Honestly, I enjoy the openness of the students. In the third class they asked me so many personal questions, including the "do you have a boyfriend?" classic. I also got asked what I think about violence, respect, and treating students fairly, so I think I answered well.
All in all, I think it was an encouraging day for me and that the students feel pretty comfortable with me. I'm excited for these next two weeks!