Another one of those important acronyms.

Today in class, my classmates and I were charged with the direction to somehow present the NCPTS (North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards). My partner and I worked with standard 3, teachers know the content they teach. During this study, we created a series of memes (a humorous image that is spread rapidly throughout Internet users), to introduce and share about this standard. Here is an example of one of the memes we created:

The man on this meme is known as "the most interesting man in the world," so we figured, educators are pretty impressive, who better to represent us than THE most interesting man? 

This standard that he is representing is standard 3, section d, part 1: 

Teachers incorporate 21st century life skills into their teaching deliberately, strategically, and broadly. These skills include leadership, ethics, accountability, adaptability, personal productivity, personal responsibility, people skills, self-direction, and social responsibility. Teachers help their students understand the relationship between the North Carolina Standard Course of Study and 21st century content, which includes global awareness; financial, economic, business and entrepreneurial literacy; civic literacy; and health awareness.

If you are a teacher, or are training to be a teacher in North Carolina, this link takes you to a shareable Google Drive document that breaks down each of these standards in a know, understand and do format. Everything on this document is what a North Carolina Professional Teacher is responsible for and held accountable to uphold in their classroom at all times. With this document that you adhere to, your classroom will be a place of impactful learning and engaged students. 

Dare to be great, people!

Brittany Kertesz

When you're gone for a week...

Technically, it wasn't even a full week out of the classroom, just 3 days of instruction time. The students noticed, and the material they are learning is so much farther than I thought it would be. The students were thrown off by my not being there one of the days I'm usually there. It's interesting to see the way students react to the smallest things.

After creating plans for a substitute teacher for one of my assignments, I realized how much work it takes to walk someone through an entire day of class. Also, it is a big task to prepare an entire day of lessons. I have learned so much more in preparing a full days worth of classes than I have learned in creating individual lesson plans. Although there are pros and cons to creating individual lesson plans versus creating overwhelmingly huge unit plans, I have learned so much in the way that I think and in the way that they work together by creating the big picture. 


Throughout my education career, I have not seen a lot of the benefits of creating a single lesson plan that doesn't fit into anywhere. Not that we're practicing creating a plan for three weeks of instruction time with our students in student teaching, I'm continuing to see the form and flow of the classroom. Also, we have real life scenarios that we get to work through. Instead of trying to prepare lessons for the "what if" student, we have real students that we know and get to prepare for. 


Also, there are very helpful when creating substitute lesson plans. Although some of them can be cookie-cutter lessons, for the overwhelming majority of them, you can differentiate the lessons to for to your classroom. A substitute teacher can look like a practiced teacher by carrying out your instructions! 

So you need a substitute.

Today was an interesting day. My CE had already notified me that she would not be in the classroom today because she had jury duty. She asked me if I would be willing to close out the day with a mini math lesson and a social studies integrated literacy lesson. I, of course, jumped at this opportunity!

The only problem was I didn't have the material she was wanting me to teach the class.
This was the epitome of flexibility in a classroom.

I showed up about 30 minutes early to study the material, but with the sub trying to talk to me the whole time, it was really hard to focus on the task at hand. I was able to read over everything once and get somewhat of an understanding on what was expected in today's class. Luckily my CE leaves INCREDIBLE notes to follow. I had no question of what I was supposed to do and I felt confident in what she had left for us.

It was a great feeling to have this much practice, even unmentored. I am preparing for a smiliar experience tomorrow (continued jury duty for my CE) and will lead the math lesson at the beginning of the day along with 3 of the guided reading groups. I created a lesson plan for the guided reading groups, but as for the math, it is a little different.

Working through transitions is one of the best experiences I took from today. Directions have to be clearly stated and students have to be redirected as you, the teacher, are trying to prepare which slides are next and what devices should be turned off, on, or connected. The papers should be passed out as whiteboards are being picked up... Whew! It's a lot to take in. But I witnessed it for the first time and I'm proud of myself for completing all required material with plenty of time to spare.

From today, I learned that you have to be prepared for anything as a teacher. Whether this be your duty as an American or any other problem, teachers need to be prepared for situations like these that arise.


Stay inspired,
Brittany Kertesz

There's always one.

Continued adventures at the elementary school... I have been working with a fabulous class. This class has been great to observe and work with because my CE is incredible and my class is a great variety of students. These 4th graders have a range of reading abilities, from the 1st grade to the 10th grade reading level. My teacher has been described to me as a "gentle leader" of any group. She encourages, but not too often. She reprimands, but in a way that is constructive, not belittling.

This amazes me.

There is one student in the class and she does NOT STOP TALKING. I have tried proximity. I have tried calling her name out. I have tried talking to her, but she never quite gets it. And its not that she doesn't understand, she just loves talking. She's actually quite brilliant. She does well in every subject, has an impressive reading level, and she goes to 2 AIG classes. I do not believe it is because she is bored, she just has a lot of wit and sarcasm that she has to keep contained all day. She has been moved 3 times already, but she can genuinely talk to anyone and everyone.

So... what do you do?

After researching a few articles to fix this problem, I actually found a couple that were very interesting ideas. From this article, one teacher said that she had a very talkative student and what helped was when she finally brought in the child's parents to observe their child. After this, there was a huge attitude change. First of all, this is a good tactic because it gets the parents involved as well as straightens out the student's behavior. This was my favorite idea. There are more on the website, so I strongly suggest checking it out!

Good luck out there!
Brittany Kertesz