Co-Teaching Presentation

In the class we did a co-teaching presentation where we had to show different types of co-teaching.  One of the co-teaching types that my group and I had to show was teaming.  Teaming required you to have a certain level of trust with your co-teacher to be able to practice this in the classroom.  Teaming is when both teachers’ share instruction and the teachers take turn.  In the group presentation we showed this and I thought this type was good and I say anyone who can do this type of co-teaching would benefit from it and so would the students.

Co-Teaching

Reading Purposeful Co-Teaching by Greg Conderman, Val Bresnahan, and Theresa Pedersen was very interesting especially the chapter where they talked about the co-teaching stages.  I think the most important stage is the beginning stage which talks about getting to know your co-teacher and establishing a relationship with that person.  I think that this is the most important stage because if you don't start off with a good relationship with your co-teacher then everything else will go downhill.  You have to start off having a good relationship with your co-teacher so you both can have a good rapport with each other and be able to communicate about the children in your classroom and also be able to create lesson plans together.  I believe that is how my assistant and I started off.  Last year when we first started working together I did not think we would get along but as we got to know each other and saw how the other one works we established a relationship and now our class is organized and the children seem happy.

Silence speaks volumes

In the Essential Conversation by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, she talks about how silence  speaks volume.  That really grabbed my attention because I know there are times when I become silent when I don't want to hear what someone has to say.  In the book the father at the parent teacher conference was silent because he did not like what the teacher said because it was in conflict with his culture.  During a parent teacher conference I have not experienced that silence but now that I am determined do lead my parent teacher conferences differently and start "telling the truth" I may get more silences.

Essential Conversation

In reading "the Essential conversation" by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot I found it interesting that she wrote a whole book about parent-teacher conferences.  But it gave me a lot to think about because I thought about how I usually do parent-teacher conferences.  When I read the part in the book about how parent-teacher conferences become ritualistic because you give out the same platitudes and it becomes routine.  I noticed that I do that at my conferences because sometimes I am not sure how to go about telling a parent what their child really does.  I just give general information and tell them that their child is doing well.  After reading this it has made me more committed to not being routine in my conferences but to give the parents true information about their child.

IEP's

Something that I couldn't stop thinking about was in the video where everyone was meeting to go over the IEP for Dominic. The special education teacher wanted to shorten the time that he was pulled out of the regular classroom from 45 minutes to 30 minutes. But the parents did not want that so they left the time at 45 minutes. Someone mentioned in class that maybe the special education teacher wanted to shorten the time because he may miss information in his regular education classroom so they may wanted to shorten the time for that reason. But what I couldn't stop thinking about was that whatever the regular education teacher was going over in the classroom the special education teacher should be going over it to but maybe in a different way to better help Dominic. I just cannot help thinking that that is the way it should be and when Dominic goes back to his regular education teacher she should reiterate what he went over when he was with his special education teacher. It shouldn't be separate lessons it should somehow all come together.

 

Crucial Conversations

I found something interesting while reading the first couple of chapters of Crucial Conversations.  The definition of crucial conversations that Patterson used is "a discussion between two or more people where stakes are high, opinions vary and emotions run strong" (Patterson, Grenny, Mcmillan & Switzler, 2012).  I found this intresting because is is difficult for me to have crucial converstations even with my family.  You would think with your family you would be able to tell them anything that was crucial or important to you.  It is definitely difficult to have those converstations with someone at work so you would not think it would be difficlut with family, but I find that, that is the hardest converstation to have because you do not want to hurt anyones feelings or you may feel that it may cause a rift between you and your family.  That is why this topic interested me so much because I want to learn how to have better crucial conversations with my family and when collaborating at work.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog.  I am very excited to start blogging.  I can't wait to start reading other people's blogs as well.