I'm Kathryn Williams and I'm student teaching with Chicago Semester. I go to Central College (in Pella, IA), but I went to high school in Bemidji, MN. I love being in Chicago! I am living with three other girls from different colleges. Here is a picture of us in our apartment:
I am teaching pre-calculus and college algebra at Taft High School. To be considerate of my cooperating teacher's privacy, I'm going to call her CT on this blog. She has been really great to me so far and I have really enjoyed working with her. I have begun teaching some lessons and she has been really supportive of what I have been doing. I also have gotten to know a lot of the rest of the mathematics department at Taft, and they all seem really good.
Each week I plan on posting a "wow" and a "pow" from my "teaching" week. "Wows" are good things that happened, and "Pows" are not so good things. I will try to write a little bit about what is going on outside of teaching too.
The Teaching Week
Wow: One thing that was really cool that happened this week was that one of the students who failed last semester aced the quiz. I had noticed that she had been doing all of her homework correctly and paying attention in class instead of sleeping. When I graded the quizzes I was surprised by how well she did. I told my CT, and she almost did not believe me. She asked me who the student was sitting next to after the new seating chart. When I told her, she said, “Yup that was definitely all her.” I was so proud of her, that I told her she had done really well the next day (even though I did not pass back the tests), and told her to keep up the good work. I think she is going to take advantage of the new start that this semester brings.
Pow: This week was really busy. I was teaching first and fifth period, and doing all of the planning for them, so I had a lot to do. It was also the first full week that the students have had since I've been here, so it seemed pretty long to me. It was hard to keep up with planning, but it's not like I can fall behind because otherwise I won't have anything to do with the students. Also the content I am teaching is pretty advanced for high school, so it takes some work for me to remember all of the details. Right now we are graphing trigonometric functions, something I haven't done since tenth grade!
The Rest of the Week
Last Sunday was the Chinese New Year parade, and Rachel, Jennifer, and I decided to jump on the red line to Chinatown to get the experience. This is something I have always looked forward to doing, so I am so excited to have gotten to do it. It was snowing through the whole parade, but nobody seemed to care (and of course I didn't--I'm from Minnesota). Here are some pictures from parade:
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