Observation Day...DUN DUN DUNNNN! (dramatic music)

All the worrying about my observation was for nothing, and I should've expected it!  Dr. Swanson is the most amazing person and I should've known that she would have been extremely supportive and constructive with any criticism that she would have.  I enjoyed getting all her comments from my lesson, and we talked about my experiences so far and things went great!

But before I dive into the details of my observations, let's rewind a bit.

Throughout the day, I had plenty of opportunities to demonstrate my saxophone playing as well as working through parts of my lesson with different classes.  Let's just say that there is nothing more that students love than seeing LIVE demonstrations of instruments.  I played my saxophone for today's Kindergarten class, and a little girl sitting in the back of the room lit up and was SO incredibly interested!  It's seeing stuff like that, that makes me want to teach music!

I gave my first "teacher's eye/teacher's voice" today to a couple students in Mrs. Thurman's Treblemakers (a group of 6th graders that play the Orff Xylophones).  They kept intentionally knocking the bars off their neighbors instrument and they were falling onto the ground.  So I had the students stop, and I told them that it would cost a couple hundred bucks to replace one of those bars if it broke.  Mrs. Thurman went even further and said that it would ruin the instrument and she would probably just have to buy another xylophone (and she has a point!).  One of those instruments can cost upwards of $600.  They didn't do it from then on, so hopefully that instilled something in them and they won't do it again.  

As the clock approached 2:00pm, my palms began to sweat and I was definitely getting more nervous.  But when Dr. Swanson walked it, I knew I would be fine.  Something about how encouraging she is that makes me feel like I don't need to be nervous, and to just focus on the students!  She was excited because she was going to be doing my observation on her new iPad with a new app that is specifically designed for KTIP observations (COOL!)

This particular 5th grade class was FULL of questions.  I was totally not expecting that, which is fine, but when you plan a lesson, you should figure some time in for questions, especially when you're demonstrating instruments.  I didn't even get through my entire lesson plan, which included a "mini" open response for the students (of which I did not include a scoring rubric...whoops!)  At about 2:30, Dr. Swanson and I went to the art classroom and talked about the observation.

She helped me start my Professional Growth Plan which included strengths of my teaching: content knowledge, communication, enthusiasm (anyone thinking of that 312 song??), energy, and lesson planning.  Also, some of my weaknesses: classroom management (I'm having a lot of difficulty with IEP students and students with special needs) as well as the different assessments for students.

But, overall, she said she was really proud of what I was doing and that I definitely looked like a confident teacher in front of the class.  THAT made me more excited than anything!