Reflect on what you know about the school community.

I know a lot about Fairmont. I dated a girl for awhile who went to Fairmont State and she showed me around, and I had several friends who also went here. I enjoy the historical part of Fairmont (things like Monagah and the oil and gas in the area) and I think that the city has done a decent job keeping some of that alive. I can get around town pretty well, at least to the major parts of town and I know most of the major landmarks. Most of the kids that I know from Fairmont went to westside though.

Reflect on your school’s or mentor teacher’s classroom management system.

My host teacher's classroom management style is really student oriented which is awesome because that's not been one of my strong points. He encourages students who are behind or do not usually do work to complete assignments and is very patient with all of the students regarding missed or late assignments. He said something the other day that I think really accurately describes how he teaches, "I've never seen a kid that doesn't want to pass." Sometimes it takes a little bit of encouragement but it is amazing that the kids who are problems for everyone else work so well for us. One of the students actually got suspended for cursing out one of the other interns but he is a great student in history, and I accredit that to Mr. Morgan's classroom management style. One of the things that he does that is really effective is always has paper and pencils for everyone and it's incredibly intuitive. At first students abuse the privilege. In the first two weeks we must've burned through 50 pencils. We'd always ask for them back but would seldom be returned. After a few weeks though kids actually started returning pencils the next day and would remind their friends they had borrowed them. It was actually kind of rewarding to see the kids start to, for lack of a better term, care about borrowing our supplies and returning them. (I should mention that he hasn't bought any pencils to my knowledge, we acquire them throughout the day and he has kids bring in packs of pencils for extra credit every 9 weeks) And I think all of this is because the students realize he cares and are caring back. Now whether or not this is done consciously or subconsciously I don't know, but regardless it is inspiring to see from my point of view.

Reflect on any after-school activity you attended.

I went to the east/west game a few weeks ago and it was a lot of fun. East lost and that was depressing, but the band was great (as always). It was so much different from participant year when I went to the east/west game. Almost no one recognized me last year but this year all of my students were talking to me, other teachers were talking to me. I didn't have any parents talk to me thankfully, usually parents only talk when they need to complain it seems. One depressing thing about the game was the some parents in the stands who are setting bad examples for their kids. The fact that every parent is a coach comes with the territory but some of the parents were yelling obscenities towards the coaches and the refs. Cursing is whatever, who am I to tell them what words they can or cannot say. The fact that they were choosing to do so where there were children though was a little uncalled for though.