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In my opinion, I feel like the relationship a teacher and their students have is the most important thing to have. A positive relationship with your teacher is very important to me because  that makes the class a lot more enjoyable. If a teacher is rude or doesn’t really seem interested in the students or in teaching in general, it gets annoying and I don’t want to be in that class. For example, my 3rd hour teacher just seems like she doesn’t want to teach anymore, she even once said that she’s only in it because she needs the money. She always has a bad attitude, is rude to my class, is always yelling, and barely gets any teaching in. On the other side of things, my 4th hour teacher messes around with us and treats us like people instead of acting superior to us. Being able to joke around with a teacher, talk to them about something personal, feel comfortable enough to ask them for help, and actually enjoy their class is very important. I feel like I do my best in my classes I get along with the teacher in. I don’t feel like the grading scale is as important and if students weren’t so focused on passing classes with good grades to get into a college and focused on actually learning, our lives would be a lot less stressful. I also feel like if a teacher makes a lesson that is more fun and interactive more students would do it and care about what they’re doing. No kid wants to take notes and do boring worksheets for 7 hours 5 days a week straight. Personally, I get more into a lesson when it’s an activity and something enjoyable to do. For example, I had to do a project in my econ class where we took pictures of 8 of our vocab words and put them on a slideshow and that was fun because we got to go around the school and mess around but were still getting our work done. To me, I feel like kids should be able to pick the classes they really want to explore and will help them in the future instead of being forced to take classes that might not even help them in the future at all. School to me should be about enjoyment and learning and not stressing out so bad to make sure you get good enough grades.

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To whom it may concern,

I am writing a letter of recommendation for Emilia Guerra. Ms. Guerra was placed as my teacher cadet for the 2018-2019 school year in my 5th hour English 9 classroom. Over the course of the year, Ms. Guerra proved to be a hardworking and creative teacher cadet, taking on any role I gave her with enthusiasm and care. I could always count on her to take on daily tasks without complaint or hesitation.

More than just helping me with smaller tasks from day to day, I challenged Ms. Guerra to take on more creative roles by designing assignments for students that were both academic and engaging. Ms. Guerra went above and beyond in this capacity by introducing a whole new piece of technology (Seesaw.com) into the classroom. She knew about how students need multiple ways to express their learning, so she recommended we start using Seesaw.com, which lets students write, record, and draw for assignments. I was very impressed by Ms. Guerra’s initiative with incorporating this technology in the classroom, and it shows that she really cares about how the students are learning.

Ms. Guerra also demonstrated good judgement and understanding for the students. My 5th hour class struggled with understanding when to quiet down or switch tasks, so Ms. Guerra suggested that we start using a simple hand raising procedure to get the class on task. We implemented this in the winter and it proved to be a great success to the class as we could use it every day to keep the class focused. When talking with Ms. Guerra, I could tell she understands students and what they need and she always spoke about students with care and empathy.

Overall, I think Ms. Guerra would be successful at any level of education because she is dedicated to giving students a positive and engaging experience. She understands the needs of students and handles discipline and correction with empathy and care, especially those students who need the most help. I would highly recommend Ms. Guerra for any teaching position because I know she would bring all of her effort and creativity to the role.

Sincerely,

Nick Ender

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While in this class I built a great relationship with my cooperating teacher. At first, when we had the reflection sheets, he wouldn’t really talk to me or have me do things. After I got kind of bored and getting the reflections done early on in the week I would start to go up to Mr. Ender and ask him what I could do, if there were any jobs for me, or what he would want me to. At first it was just busy work (which was actually fun to do), passing out papers, passing papers back, sorting through papers, things like that. A couple weeks went by and then we started to do our classroom management project and I brought it up with him, did the research, and gave him a few different options I thought would work the best. He picked one I had some experience in, considering I use it in one of my own classes, and we started to implement it into this class. Since I started bringing things up he started to let me do more and started to trust me with more things. He also started coming up to me and saying he has something for me to do or ask if I would mind doing something for him. He even started to let me make up worksheets and lessons, grade assignments, and even grade quizzes. We started talking like equals and not like he was a superior and that made this experience a lot better. I would suggest something that we could do as a class and he would give me feedback and then we go from there whether we are going to do that lesson or think of something better. I actually come up with their “fun” assignments, the ones we do on the technology based part of my classroom management project. It’s really nice because it seems like Mr. Ender is starting to really care about my opinion and really getting me engaged in the lessons. That’s kind of the best part of this experience, in my opinion, is feeling like you’re actually making a difference and helping out rather than just doing busy work or just observing what’s going on.  Don’t get me wrong, observing from the teacher point of view for the first couple weeks was fun because you get a completely different perspective of how things work in a classroom.

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For my classroom management project at first I focused on the biggest and most obvious problem with this class, non-stop talking. At first I brought this up to Mr. Ender because I could tell he was getting sick of the talking too, given he had to have talks with the whole class that it get way too out of control and he will change the way he teaches if needed. So, before he had to turn into a mean kind of teacher I did some research on what other teachers suggest to do for a noisy class to get them to stop talking so much and came up with 4 strategies I thought would help and sent the list to him. He picked the one I thought would work the best which is when the students are talking that he raises his hand and when the student sees this they need to stop talking and also raise their hand. I have had some positive feedback with this in one of my own classroom’s and thought it would work really well with these kids and it did! He explained the concept to the class and said he was going to try it out the rest of the week and see how it worked with them. It was a whole new class, this has worked so well for the class I am shocked. Mr. Ender gets the respect he deserves, the students aren’t wasting time, and the noise level has gone down drastically. After using it for a little bit he started to have fun with it and does a little hand movement that they need to copy and not just raise their hand. Also, for the technology part of my project I suggested we use this website called “Seesaw” and did a little bit of research over it and did more with him. He liked the layout and idea of it so he ended up making an account and had me join as a student so we could really see what it’s all about. I suggested this because all they ever do is questions and never get to have fun with things. Mr. Ender seems to really love this website especially with all the different options you can pick to do an assignment with. He even has me making assignments on my own! Really positive feedback on both.

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Throughout the week I basically saw the same things. Since this is a freshman class it tends to get loud easily, they will start side conversations and it’ll grow and Mr. Ender will then say “Hey Guys” pretty loudly to get their attention and say what they should be doing. After that the students do what they’re supposed to and Mr. Ender is either at his desk or walking around, while doing so he will remind the kids that they can raise their hand or go back to him with any questions they have and he’ll be happy to help. With every worksheet they’ve gotten he will go over it the next day and ask what ones were confusing and he goes over them. Some days, since they’re reading a book, they’ll read as a class or they read independently. On Monday he showed them the audiobook for when they read independently as another tool to help them. When the bell rings for class to start he usually says “Good afternoon, how are ya?” to the class and has a little conversation with a small group of students for a minute. Overall, the most things I see him do is be available for help whenever they need it, talks to them like normal people not little kids, and knows how to keep the class collected in a non rude way.

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Since the students are reading a story with different books in them and Mr. Ender has different ways the kids read you can see the different ways kids act and respond to certain teachings. For instance when the class reads aloud, some students pay attention and read along but others don’t pay attention and get distracted by other little things going on. Another way is silent reading. Most students really like this because you read at your own pace and Mr. Ender lets them listen to music, as well. Although music helps some students read or they can be focused with it others just sit on their phone and don’t do anything, again distracted. Another way is he will have them take notes or do some questions along with what they’re reading that day. He lets the students work in small groups at their tables for these… most students just end up talking and doing other things than what they’re supposed to. Even with students getting off task Mr. Ender always brings the class back and gets them back on track in no time.

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When looking at the students you can easily tell that they’re going through physical changes, some boys have facial hair while others do not. Some are taller while others remain short. Some, even though this is bad to admit, smell not the greatest. With their cognitive changes it’s easy to tell because when they’re doing the questions that go along with their reading there are some students that fly throw it in no time. Others struggle with it and don’t always understand the questions and need Mr. Ender to come over and go into a deeper explanation so that the student can reach that “Ah ha!” moment.

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This is a great learning tool that we've started using. He loved the "trial run" with our class so now he uses it for all his freshman!