Today during their pull out session, the instructor had me go around to each table and assist the students with their math assignments. This proved to be a difficult task because of the differences between how the students were taught to solve a particular problem and how I would go about solving the problem. Currently I am taking a College Algebra class and the steps they needed help with (basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of fractions) I usually work out in my head or skip because of my past instruction. However they needed to write out these specific steps that I have learned to skip since my freshmen year of high school. After a few minutes I finally worked it out and it began to come back to me. Other than that today went very smoothly.
On multiple occasions the students became unruly. Each time the teacher had to count down from three to keep them in line. However they still kept talking amongst themselves and finally calmed down when the instructor threatened them with detention. I felt as though she was not firm enough with her first attempts to keep them quiet. She was quiet herself and did not seem very authoritative.By using a loud and firm voice, instruction will be taken as a command not a question. If I was put in the situation, I would make sure that my authority is well established so the students understand that they need to pay attention and keep quiet while working on individual assignments.
Today was a great leaning experience and I am already excited to go back next week!
James! You were the first to go out of all of us to DIA. I was nervous and didn't know what to expect but after your reading your post it made me feel a lot better!
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