Student Teaching: Pre-Primary: Week 2

On Wednesday after school, my mentor made the comment about how she notices that I always seem to have a look on my face. She asked me if I was nervous or something and I said yes. Then she said that I needed to smile more. This really put me down because I have been observed many times and I was just observed Monday by my Supervisor and she said nothing about that. She and my old Cohort professor had both said that I make this little faces when interacting with the kids, but they didn't say it was bad. They both said they liked it. My other mentor never mentioned anything and I taught many lessons in that class. 

The worst part is that she didn't say anything about if my lessons were good or not and I thought my lessons had gone very well. Besides the fact that she pointed out that I forgot to do closures again, but that is so minor and I have noticed her not having closures before as well. 

I just really need a day off to get everything together. I feel like she is not very organized and it makes me not be as organized as I am usually. 

Thursday ended up being an okay day and she did say anything more about my face. I tried smiling more in general throughout the whole day. Towards the end of the day we had a situation with the art teacher. The art teacher comes to the classroom and at the end of the class we came back into the classroom. The kids were cleaning up the tables with Clorox wipes and my mentor got very upset. I felt really awkward and my mentor was very upset because one of the other teachers had told her just the day before not use them. 

Also I liked the art teacher. She seems nice and I have heard the teachers during planning talk about how they aren't doing anything creative and that she could do better. So they already don't like her and now this does not help. 

After the students had left we were planning and she got an email from the art teacher saying she did not know about that and my mentor got mad. She ended up leaving to go talk to her and while she was walking out, she said I could leave since it already got so late. 

When I came in Friday, she said that the art teacher had already left, so she did not get to talk to her. She also avoided her when she could. On Monday we are going to have art, so that shall be interesting. 

All in all, I felt overwhelmed this week. I felt like I did so well last semester when teaching my lessons and this time I feel like my mentor does not like them or expects more. 

Goals for next week:
Plan a week/time for my cycle of learning.