Student Teaching - Week #12

by Victoria Johnston - Mitchell Elementary

Still Alice - Lookingglass Theatre

Since the semester is coming to a close, this Thursday was our last arts event. As a group we attended the play Still Alice that is about a well-known psychologist that develops Alzheimer’s. Throughout the play, viewers see her slowly lose her memory and ability to recall basic things like who her children are. It was a moving play to watch, but I could not imagine how the difficulty would have increased if I personally knew a family member with the disease. The play was well produced and the set slowly whittled away until the end nothing was left on stage; this progression seemed to symbolize Alice’s slowly deteriorating memory. I will miss these weekly arts events, but I plan on taking advantage of my last three weeks to visit more museums, and hopefully the Brookfield Zoo. 

Museum of Science & Industry

One of my new favorite things to do since moving to Chicago is visit museums. There are a plethora throughout the city and not enough time to visit them all, but having multiple options is exciting. This weekend I visited the Museum of Science and Industry with my roommate and another Chicago Semester member. This museum has exhibits from weather simulators, to miniature cities, to an old submarine that visitors can tour. It was a vast museum and if I have the opportunity to return I would pick a section to focus on and explore its many options. I think my favorite portion was the weather simulators because they would generate lightning every half an hour as well as had a tank for mini tsunamis. If it had not cost extra money my friends and I would have gone through the Body World Animal exhibit, but we did see the neck of a giraffe from a distance. This museum is housed in an old building from the 1893 World’s Fair that was held in Chicago. I am currently reading the book Devil in the White City and was rather excited to see a building often referenced in the book as well as the area where the fair was held. 

The Devil in the White City

For the past few weeks my class has been working on creating their own dances for their weekly dance class. It has been neat to see their confidence and creativity expound through that project, especially since they were a little timid at the beginning of the process.

My last week of full time teaching is rapidly approaching. Today marks the first day of my last week. I was thinking it would be a relief to have a little extra time to focus on graduation requirements by giving back responsibility, but then my next thought was, “No, these are my kids I can’t give the responsibility back to my cooperating teacher.”  Friday commemorated the end of the third quarter for my students and so all afternoon was spent finalizing grades, passing back papers, and meeting with other teachers to plan our student lead, parent conferences on Wednesday.

School House Rock

My final excitement that I will share for this week happened while I was planning for tomorrow’s lessons. I do a mini writing lesson every morning and the focus for this week is conjunctions and interjections. In the middle of planning I had an “aha!” moment and remembered a short video called “Conjunction Junction”. If you regularly watched cartoons on Saturday morning in the 90's you probably remember this three minute cartoon. While it may be corny, I am excited about using it as a teaching tool. My kids (and roommate) may think I am kooky, but I guess that just comes as part of the job description.