Jasmine Vargas

Week 4/13/2021-4/16/2021

This week was very tiring because I used it as my catch-up week since I was

a little behind on my hours. I was able to make it Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,

and Friday. Tuesday and Wednesday were just normal days, I observed my mentor

teacher give lessons and then helped the students with their independent work. On

Thursday, I gave my lesson over advantages and disadvantages of different

payment methods. Friday was my first full day at the school.

Even though it was my first time ever giving a lesson to a group of 5th grade

students, my lesson went pretty well. I knew the concept and information very well

so that definitely helped me a lot to teach the lesson effectively. However, I did

struggle a little bit to explain two key terms that were really important to fully

understand the lesson. Once they were able to connect the meanings by

themselves, the lesson went pretty smoothly, and we had a ton of engagement. I

was a little nervous in the beginning but as the lesson progressed, the nervousness

went away.

Friday was really nice because I was able to see how they spend a typical

full day in school. We had about an hour break to work and plan ahead for the next

week. Even though I did the normal observations with student interactions, I really
like that I was able to experience a full teacher day. I remember loving Fridays at

school, so being at Pilgrim all day really brought back many sweet memories. On

Fridays everyone at schools is happy because the weekend is finally coming up and

they will finally have some well-deserved rest; I truly missed that feeling.

My goal for this week was to be fully ready and prepared for my

presentation. I really wanted to create a fun and resourceful presentation for the

students because the information will be very valuable for their lives in the future.

Even though my mentor teacher gave me his PowerPoint as guidance, it was still

challenging to fully put my thoughts into the presentation. Since I am very

knowledgeable of the information, I had to cut out some parts because I felt it

would’ve been too much information for them and then I could cause confusion.

In this week, I learned that it is so easy for teachers to become overwhelmed

after a tiring week, but it is so important to remind yourself during those times why

you made the decision to become an educator. Even though I am not a teacher just

yet, I can definitely relate to how tiring teaching can be after observing a couple

classrooms. This week was extremely tiring for me because I had a lot going on,

but for one second during my observations, I was just looking at the students and I

reminded myself that I was in that classroom because I want to be a teacher to a

group of students just like them.