Speaker and Nancie Atwell's book

I thought that Friday’s speaker, Lori Pyles, was great! I loved how she talked about her experiences and shared stories that she has accumulated throughout the years of her teaching. My brother and I were just talking last night about the impact that one could have on teaching a child that has been brought up as either unwanted or uncared for. Listening to Lori, and seeing the impact that she has had on a few of her students, really motivates me to try to relate more with my future students, and not to prejudge a student just because of what his/her outer shell may reveal. As one of my cooperating teachers said to me the first day that I came to observe, “Never believe what has been said about your students before you yourself have them.” A lot of times a student gets a bad reputation and that bad reputation will follow him/her all throughout high school due to the fact that some teachers just assume that they are bad because of what a colleague might have said.
While reading In the Middle, by Nancie Atwell, I began to look ahead to when I will be making my lesson plans for my student teaching in the spring. In the chapter entitled “Getting Started,” Atwell goes over many different ways that she evaluates and gets to know her students within the first couple weeks of school. She mentions several different activities such as drama games and writing surveys which are somewhat fun and will allow the teacher to see how well the students can write or enjoy writing. I like these ideas, and I would like to do something like this in the spring if I feel that I have enough time. In this chapter she also has a list of things that she has within her classroom, which makes me imagine what I will have and what I will not have in my own classroom in the future.