Kayla Wiedmaier's Disposition Journals Self-Awareness: 3.

Self-confidence In my junior experience, I felt low confidence because I was so new to the classroom and also I was working with students who were in middle school. I had observed a middle school, but I did not favor it. When I found out I received a middle school for my junior experience, I wasnt as excited as I was when I started my student teaching at a high school. I prefer working with teens in high school because they have a better sense of the world than middle schoolers, and also they get my humor. When I was at the two middle schools, I just felt low confidence because I did not like teaching students like they were children, and I had to because they left an elementary school. Although I have known elementary and middle schoolers who I dont treat like children, I had to plan lessons that were focused around more childish activities. This made me feel low confidence because I did not feel comfortable treating students like this. I feel more confident around high schoolers than middle schoolers because they understand more about school and life. (I am not saying I hate middle schoolers. Im saying that I prefer the maturity of high schoolers, although I question their maturity sometimes) When I started at Benton High School, I was excited because I was finally getting to work at the high school level. My confidence level instantly boosted because I felt comfortable enough to communicate with high schoolers. Even when my supervisor came in, I felt comfortable enough to teach and I wasnt scared. The artifact I provided for this disposition is an evaluation from my supervisor and he checked off on the sheet that I was confident in my teaching. He even commented in our conference after the class that I was confident.

Self-Management 3. Adaptability Adaptability is a facet of teaching that must be acquired early. You never know what is going to happen in a classroom on a daily basis. I hate having a set routine and with teaching, the only routine is what time you wake up in the morning and what times the classes are set for! The students are different every day and so are the lessons, but sometimes things go differently than expected, a student might be absent and miss the entire lesson, an outside event occurs, a pep assembly happens, a tornado or fire drill happens, a lesson doesnt take the entire time, a lesson takes more time than expected, etc. Teachers must think on their feet when something unexpected happens, but that is also exciting as well as scary sometimes. For example, I was beginning a lesson and one of my students went up to my cooperating teachers desk. He told her that he was feeling dizzy and like he was going to pass out. She instructed him to go back his desk while she sent another student to retrieve the nurse. Instead of the nurse, the vice-principal came back. The whole attention of the class turned to my cooperating teacher, the viceprincipal, and the student. My cooperating teacher told me to keep instructing class, but the students would not focus on me. I finally got them to read a passage from our text and asked them to review it. I wasnt originally going to do that, but I had to think on my feet. The artifact I am attaching for this disposition is a reflection that I completed for my lesson plans in regards to this lesson. I mentioned the incident and how it affected the plans and how I was easily able to adapt to the surroundings.

Social Awareness 1. Empathy Empathy is an important trait to have, especially while teaching. This is because it helps foster good relationships with students and also lets them know that you care about them. I have several students whom I have formed good connections with and have showed empathy for, which has sincerely helped our teacher/student relationship. For example, one of my students has had trouble passing the weekly vocabulary quizzes. She is on an IEP and has trouble focusing in class. I have noticed that she was not passing, so I sat her down and asked her why she thought she wasnt passing her weekly vocabulary quizzes. She explained to me that she knows the definitions of each word, but every week she mixes up the words. I empathized with her and could grasp her perspective, so it allowed her to feel like she wasnt alone in the class. I went over the words with her, one by one, and we created easier definitions for her to remember. I also helped her remember the words by showing her the similarities in the order of the letters in both the word and its definition. When she retook the quizzes, she did an excellent job of demonstrating what she had learned from our study session. She aced all of the quizzes that she retook. The artifact that I am attaching for this disposition is an example of a quiz that she has passed. Recently, she has passed every quiz given to her and I am so proud of her. I think the empathy that I showed her played a tremendous role in her doing better on her quizzes, because I feel like if I did not then she might have felt lost without speaking up or just accepted her grades as final. This shows that empathy is an important asset for teachers to acquire because it allows the teacher to develop better relationships with their students, and it also allows them to help their students.

Relationship Management 6. Teamwork and Collaboration Since there are two eleventh grade English teachers, I have a partner teacher who I collaborate with daily. We teach the same assignments because we create them together. During our planning period, she comes in to plan the lessons for the upcoming weeks and also to create worksheets, etc. She is a major help when I am not sure if my plans are good enough for the lesson. My cooperating teacher and my partner teacher help me out tremendously and have made me realize how important teamwork and collaboration are in teaching. I also collaborate and bounce ideas off of my cooperating teacher every hour. We also do a lot of teamwork with other English teachers. Once every week, all of the English teachers go to one classroom and work together on data and creating new ideas for teaching. It is also a time where all of the English teachers in the building can talk to each other about any problems they may have and ask questions about the curriculum. I am attaching an objective sheet as my artifact for this disposition. An objective sheet can also serve as our lesson plans because it describes what we are doing each week. My partner teacher and I collaborate on creating these objective sheets together and also we choose together which words we would like to teach the students about that week. Usually we pull these words from ACT-level words, as in this objective sheet. I have used other words from the play I have been teaching, which is The Crucible. These objective sheets address the objectives that we will be covering that week. Also, they list any homework assignments, future due dates, announcements, and the like. Students find these very useful because they know what to expect from the upcoming week. Sometimes, these objective sheets get changed because of things that may come up or an error that was made in the sheet. To create these, I usually edit a template and then send it to my partner teacher for approval and editing. She usually

adds her input onto the objective sheets, and she might change a few details to adjust to the flexibility of teaching. This process shows a high level of collaboration and teamwork because I am always working with other teachers in order to teach lessons, no matter if it is my cooperating teacher or my partner teacher. They are both extremely helpful and have made the progression to leading the classroom by myself less of a challenge than I thought it was going to be.