Kassie Vaughn

Journal Entries

Week of February 24th-28th

February 24, 2014

I have always been told that if one day you are not feeling good and you tell your class, they will usually have mercy on you and behave a little better than usual. Well, apparently, my students did not apply to the usual stereotype today . During our morning meeting, I informed them of how I wasnt feeling the greatest, and I believe I made a terrible mistake. They seemed to try to take advantage of me all day and I had to move four sticks (with only 2 students earning their way back up to I am being good! at the end of the day). The discipline system we have in place seems to work if we use it consistently, but only for that moment in time. Several children easily forget the movement of their sticks, while others simply do not care.

February 25, 2014

Today was the first day I actually experienced the natural feeling of being a teacher and having mostly everything under control. I think this feeling occurred because of two reasons: how I started off the day and how my students decided to behave. First of all, I prayed to God during my devotion this morning to please give me the patience, strength, and love to address and handle my children in the most professional, yet loving ways. (They can be quite trying on your nerves at times). Secondly, I believe my students have started to see and learn that I am going to be fair, yet consistent in my classroom management. They appeared to listen and be a little more respectful today. Only two children were asked to move their sticks.

February 26, 2014

Today was a pretty good day, even though we had two students who left early and one who was absent. I believe the change in the weather is causing some people to develop a cold, even myself, so we did quite a bit of hand sanitizing and wiping down desks with Clorox wipes. During our planning period (their Related Arts time), we had two meetings with the parents of two of the children in our class. Both students have been evaluated and tested through the Student Support Team, but their results indicated they would receive no additional resource assistance. Therefore, we met with the parents to inform them of the current situations and decide what interventions should be set in place. Also, Mrs. Hall observed my Science lesson today, which was about wind. I gave each child their own wind flag, and we took a walk around the school to observe how the wind speed and direction affected the flag, anemometer, and their individual wind flags. As a class, we rated the intensity of the wind on a scale of 0-2. I will give each child an opportunity to decorate their flags tomorrow.