Hi hi hi!
Friday was my last day subbing as a Physics teacher, so I've finally got time to get back to the blog and my "normal" life. It is unbelievable how fast the five weeks went, and also how busy and exhausted I was all the time!
I called my mom for her birthday last night and was apologizing for not getting a birthday card in the mail in time. Mom, a long-time teacher, just laughed and said she understood completely. She reminisced about how exhausted she always was when the Winter and Spring breaks finally rolled around each year, and how "necessary" every inservice and holiday day is to the sanity of a teacher. I can tell I'm going to be calling my mom a lot in my first few years of teaching...
Anyways, I had a great time teaching, with no horror stories or sour notes at all. The kids transitioned to having me as a teacher very easily - they were fun, and engaged, and interested and worked really hard. In fact, when my supervisor from SJSU stopped by to "observe me", his only comment was that he thought that maybe this gig wasn't challenging enough for me as a student teacher since the kids were treating me so well. I think that's a testament to the classroom management of the teacher I was taking over for and also to the overall culture at this school.
In case you're interested in the Physics side of things, the unit I taught was on Energy and Momentum. I really enjoyed pulling together a lot of demos and activities for this unit - I don't have photos of me doing them, but I am linking to some websites below that show the same activities / demos.
Energy:
Bowling Ball Pendulum
Sand Shakers
Entropy - this one is definitely my favorite, and worth watching!!
Friction of Shoes
Momentum:
Impulse and Egg Breaking
Strongman Apparatus
Power:
Human-Powered Lab
Machines:
Rube-Goldberg Machines
Honda Cog
And just for fun to fill in spare minutes at the end of class:
Matchstick Puzzles
Center of Mass
So I'm taking a couple of weeks off, and next semester I'll continue with my Phase II student teaching, so I'll have two classes of my own for the whole semester. Looking forward to it - there's lots of fun things to be done with Electricity and Magnetism!
4 comments:
Good for you, Kate. Won't two classes seem like a breeze compared to the six you have been doing? Time to enjoy yourself and your dear husband and dog!
Judy
That laminar flow (Entropy) video is AWESOME! I hope all's well.
Kate,
Congrats making it through your weeks of subbing so successfully! That's exciting you had that opportunity. In case my 2 1/2 years teaching so far is any predictor of your first few years, I think that while it will continue to be exhausting (and fascinating and exciting), your second year will be exponentially easier that your first (still with challenges, still with a distinct learning curve, but WAY better), and your third year will be that much better than your second. I am loving being in my third year right now. ...I kind of feel about my first year of teaching the way I do about going through middle school; it's important, you gotta do it, but I wouldn't want to go through it again for anything.
Good luck going forth in your new career. Very exciting.
Amanda
Haha, love the middle school analogy, Amanda. And very sage advice - I should probably have both you and my mom on speed dial once I finally have a class of my own next year...
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