Wow, what a start to the 10-week practicum!
Overall, this week has been incredibly fun as well as a large learning experience. The night before my first day I got food poisoning and was violently sick into the morning. However, I knew that I was going to be teaching 3 blocks and didn't want to miss my first day and miss setting up classroom expectations with the kids, so with 2 hours of sleep and nothing in my stomach but some electrolyte water I drove to school. My lessons went well overall for that first day because all my nerves were taken away by feeling ill haha. My lesson delivery was pretty smooth and I had better transitions compared to my short practicum. For fun, I also bought a stuffed bee from Ikea over the weekend for the kids to use as a "class pet/emotional support toy". I started overthinking my choice and was kinda worried that a bunch of 16-17-year-olds would think it was lame but they loved it - even the boys. We are currently in the process of naming it.
Also during my first lesson, I had to break up a conflict between a group of boys working on the introduction lab activity that I had made. This boy is diagnosed with autism (I knew this) and in his IEP it says he has trouble working in team environments which I didn't know until after the problem had happened (my SA had never seen this behaviour before either so that's why she didn't warn me). I won't have access to MyEd to see IEPs the entire practicum as apparently in New West it's district policy not to give TCs access, but that's another story. When I walked over and asked him what the issue was and if he could lower his voice. The boy was visibly frustrated and he said that his partner was not doing work and was doing it wrong. I asked what the other student was doing and he was calculating the molar mass. The boy yelling had done the weighing part of the lab. I mentioned that they were both working on different parts and doing equal work. He stopped yelling at this point and agreed to continue working with his partners. About a 1min later, the boy started yelling again and I decided to take him aside to talk. I asked if he would feel upset if someone was yelling at him and he said yes and we agreed that yelling at peers is not an appropriate way to communicate. I also asked how he was feeling, but he had no response so I ventured that he was feeling frustrated and he agreed. I asked if he had ways to calm himself down when he was feeling frustrated and after a minute of no answer I said that he could try to take three deep breaths and if he still feels frustrated walk away and take some more to help regulate his system. He agreed to try this and I let him back to his group. However, he started telling the other students off using quite a bit of swearing (such as - "What the F*** do you think you are doing?" and more). My this point my SA stepped in because she heard this part and asked him to not use that language in class. He seemed to calm down after that, and then the class ended. I checked in with the other boys being yelled at and asked how they were doing. They were good sports about it but I apologized and said that if they wanted to talk to me about it more they could at any time. Along with my SA, we contacted the boy's case manager and also emailed his mother about the incident to let them both know about what happened and how we can further support him in group environments so this doesn't happen again.
My second-day teaching was not as smooth as my first. Due to tech issues, I'm currently using my laptop (which is not a tablet) to project the notes onto the TV in the classroom. I had some calculation errors in my notes, which as I was presenting them the students noticed and got confused. Overall, the first lesson of that day was a little rough. However, over lunch, I fixed everything and the last two lessons went well. I played a practice showdown with each class which they loved! I will triple-check my notes now to make sure I do not have any errors as well as use my father's iPad to deliver lessons.