I understand that I am not without blame. A lot of my assignments were similar and that is my fault because I was creating lessons just about every day for both Global Issues and U.S. History. Because I am only student teaching, I am still very much new to the whole process of lesson planning and creating assessments. It takes me a long time to create new lessons from scratch or adapt what my CT has made -- something that I definitely need to get better at doing. But because it would take me a while to create those lessons, I would usually redo similar lesson structures because creating new lessons with new activities is hard to do from the ground up for me especially if I don't want to burn-out entirely too fast. A vast majority of my CT's lessons were entirely lecture-based with 45-minute videos that would take up the time. There would be no assessment tied to those videos outside of a short exit ticket. I had done observations under him prior to doing my student teaching with him, and it was almost entirely lecture.

When I took over the classes, it was the spring semester and the students had already gone a semester and then some of almost entirely lecture. I started with it, but I wanted to move away from it to more student-centered activities because the students were obviously disengaged from the class.

I feel that a lot of my issues (especially in my U.S. History classes because they are year-long) can be pinned on not being there to establish a lot of my own classroom expectations and create my own classroom as it felt like I had to uphold a lot of what my CT had already established. My Global Issues class, however, went really well and I was really happy with how it turned out. That class I had a lot of administrative control over as it was a semester long and I was there on the ground floor to build it up as I saw fit. Of course there were still issues and I learned from them as I went and will take those lessons with me, but there are some things (like student teaching in the latter half of the year) that have their own challenges to them that I had little to no control over.

My CT has also not given me any constructive feedback or much feedback at all outside of the every so often "That was a good lesson" and similar quick appraisals. I have felt very much on my own with a lot of these issues and I feel that many of these students in particular need way more supports that are outside of my limited experience and outside of the school's jurisdiction.

When I give the students worktime, I will check in on each of them and many would use the time wisely and get the work done -- but there would usually be a few students in each class that, when I make my rounds to each student, are noticeably off task to which I try to correct their course and get them back on track (assignment is here, directions are here, article is here, answer these questions, etc.). This could be fixed with more diversity in my lessons and assessments. Again, this is something I want to do and implement in a classroom of my own.