Brandon Willmore Weekly Reflective Log Mod 1 - 6

EDUC 601 W EEKLY R EFLECTIVE L OG T EMPLATE One of the key components of professional development is the ability to reflect upon your current practice and make adjustments. This assignment is designed to enhance your reflective practice and assist you in writing your final paper. Use this template to complete each Weekly Log for Modules: Weeks 1–6 and then the Cumulative Weekly Log Reflection. Each Professional Log Entry must be between 150-200 words, and each Personal Log Entry must be between 150-200 words. Highlight a problem and solution in each entry as well as the word count. See the Weekly Reflective Log Assignment Instructions document for specific guidelines. Student Name: Brandon Willmore Date (ex. Sept 18- 22, 2023) Professional Log Entry Reflect on your professional life. Personal Log Entry Reflect on your personal life. Log of My Week This year has been interesting for me as I moved from being a full-time 6 th grade English teacher to being a full- time building substitute at the high school level. This change has, at times, made me feel less valuable and less impactful in my teaching practice. On the other hand, I am trying to use the opportunity to be as supportive and helpful to the staff and the students as I can in this new capacity. I think that if I can set the bar in meeting the expectations set forth for me and strive to be genuinely in tune with my students, I can still manage to build relationships. I can make a lasting impression on the students that will lead them to see the value in teaching professionals in every facet of their school community. My goal is to always create a positive learning environment in which students always feel comfortable and capable of learning. I want to always maintain the classroom expectations of the teacher I’m subbing for (and let students know that the standard is NO DIFFERENT for me). But most importantly, I want to show that I am there to be supportive and help the students in every way that I can even if I’m not the one they are submitting their work to at the end of the day. If the students see that effort from me on a consistent basis, it will help them to remain in a ‘growth mindset’ and that is my ultimate goal. (word count: 253) My life at home is always busy and always presents new adventures all the time. Being two full-time working parents with three kids at home, me and my wife have struggled to get our life schedules lined up in way that we can give the optimum time and energy to our kids so that we can be supportive and intentional parents and stewards to them as they develop more and more each day. On top of that struggle, the kids recently began doing more extra- curricular activities, and they go to AWANA on Wednesdays and my daughter goes to American Heritage Girls on Thursday. Sometimes, it just feels like we never stop running, and we’re run ragged by the end of the week that we don’t spend as much time as we’d like to focus on things like prayer and quality time talking and hanging out as a family. As a solution, I believe that we may just need to get our schedule down to more of an exact science, and make sure to take advantage of all the moments that we get ‘on the margins’—the dinner table, Saturday afternoons, prayer time before bed, etc.—and make sure we’re not wasting those opportunities. (words count: 203) Page 1 of 9

EDUC 601 Log of My Week 9/25 – 10/1 This week has been another interesting experience at Olentangy Berlin High School. I had the opportunity to spend a few days in the schools Multiple Disability (MD) room because one of their special education teachers was out sick. In that room, the value of relationships with the students is more important than anything else because you’re unlikely to make progress or have students cooperate if the repport is not there. I was having trouble with one of the students by the name of Dennis at first. He was not only unwilling to work, he would get up and physically distance himself if I sat near him to try to give 1- on-1 help. In order to build rapport and help Dennis to become more comfortable with me, I worked to make sure I wasn’t imposing on him, and that I eased myself into getting close to him so that he would work with me 1-on-1. Initially this began with another aid there to mediate and assist with the tasks he was working on. After 1 or 2 times of Having the aid present, she then moved away from the table, and allowed me to take over and work with Dennis. This turned out to be the perfect method of getting him to feel comfortable with me. I think that this concept of gradual introduction can also be effective with other student populations. (word count: 231) I have continued to work on being intentional and supportive of my children each day as a loving father of three. Me and my wife received some very surprising news about my three-year-old son, Ezekiel, this past Friday, and it has caused us to spend the next 4-5 days to try to address the situation sufficiently . One of his teachers informed us that “he has been mean to two other boys in his class”, and that he “lies when he is confronted about his treatment toward them”. We are used to Ezekiel being sweet and respectful to everyone, and we were shocked, so we thought that there might be something deeper going on that was causing him to behave differently toward these two kids. When we brought Ezekiel home, my wife and I both had a long talk with him, and tried to understand why he behaved that way toward them. He maintained to us that he wasn’t being mean, and we are assuming there may just be different modes of playing, and that Ezekiel is used to being more physical and vocal when he plays with his older sister; maybe these other two boys are not. Regardless, we have to take the precautious approach and make sure that he understands how the other two boys feel (that he was mean), and that being mean to other kids is not acceptable and that it’s not Christ-like. He formally apologized to the other two boys when he came into school on Monday, and expressed to them that he won’t be mean to them in the future. (word count: 265) Log of My Week 10/2 – 10/8 I enjoyed my week in the classroom this week. As a building substitute, I am always presented with another adventure with each new day. On Friday, I was tasked to go out to another school building on the other side of the school district because they had a greater need elsewhere. It is well-known that this side of the district has some students who are more ‘rough around the edges’, and who present more resistance to teachers (particularly substitutes). With that being the case, I had more than one student attempt to take my unfamiliarity for granted, but being cognizant of this dynamic, I try to be proactive in keeping them engaged with what they are doing in spite of the push-back. In one instance, I had a student who was behind in his work try to make the case that the teacher did not provide him with the necessary packet resource to complete one of the assignments, therefore, he wasn’t able to do his work, and sat there idly. After trying to encourage him to use his resources, and also asking other students to provide their packet (none of them had it), I decided I’d reach out to another Social Studies teacher nearby to get the necessary resource, and she promptly walked into my classroom, went into a cabinet, and found a labeled student bin which had the packets organized by date/ subject. This was the appropriate place to look, and I would have liked if somebody from the class would have helped to locate this (without a teacher’s help) but, nevertheless, we figured it out. This is one example of the kind of behavior that is all-too-commonly experienced by substitutes, but it is important for them to correct the student’s tendency to avoid their work, and make sure that they are on task. (word count: 305) This week was just as busy as ever juggling full-time work and full-time parenting. We took on a new initiative in my house this week after my wife went to my daughter’s parent-teacher conference last week. Apparently, my daughter is performing at an “average or slightly below average” level in her reading acquisition work. She is in kindergarten, and just at the very early stages of learning how to read. We know that Violet is very smart, and we have felt confident that she would be able to learn (and likely stay ahead of the curve) in her academics. The news that she isn’t performing that well in learning how to read was surprising to us. Because we want to make sure that she catches up in her learning progress, we decided that we would begin working with her daily after school to develop her reading skills, and we were able to get access to a good online resource from her teachers that we can practice with Violet. This resource has books with words that she can sound out and accompanying pictures, and Violet really enjoys doing the reading activities. I think that by taking the time to work with her one-on-one, and reinforcing the fact that we are going to support her at home is very helpful, not only in the basic skill development, but also in giving her a sense of security/ assurance that we are going to help her get over any hump that she may experience in school. (word count: 252) Page 2 of 9

EDUC 601 Log of My Week 10/16 – 10/22 I had another successful week in the classroom in my substitute role. I always love discovering new teaching ideas as I fill in for other teachers, and I try to keep notes on those ideas so that I will be able to draw inspiration from them later. One of the things that I added to my list of ideas was a first quarter reflection activity that students did in ELA class. We just reached the end of the first quarter at my school, and students received their grades and started new units of study. I think that, if a teacher is not conscientious of providing reflection opportunities, students don’t always stop to self-reflect and they don’t take stock of the significance of ideas they’re learning in a class . This simple activity that the students did in the course of a single 45-minute period was a great example of giving the students an opportunity for self-reflection. Students had three prompts to in their 3 paragraph (minimum) essay response. Essentially, they explained (1) how they thought the semester went, (2) whether or not they encountered any social or emotional hurdles during the semester that effected their lives or academic performance, and (3) what aspects of ELA class they have enjoyed and/ or would like to engage more with in the future. With those prompts in mind, students were able to write a short essay almost in the form of a journal entry. Ultimately, this kind of exercise really helps students to put their progress into perspective, and then get into the right mindset for how they’re going to approach their coursework in successive quarters. . (word count: 272) My family encountered a significant hurdle this week when we all became sick with a stomach bug that kept us confined to the house all weekend. Beginning with my 3- year old son and 10-month daughter, there was a contagion that was brought into the house that eventually made it’s way to the rest of us—me, my wife and my 5- year old daughter. It was our luck that the illness came up when it did. Among other things we had planned, there was two doctor’s appointments, one outing with in-laws to a pumpkin patch, one concert, and church on Sunday morning that all had to be cancelled for the family. Even though it was only a 24-hour bug, we had three successive days where at least one of us was unable to get out of bed. This is always discouraging when you have to cancel things that you were looking forward to, but it seems like that is always when the sicknesses happen for our family. My two older children were very upset about having to miss out on the pumpkin patch adventure that we had been talking about all week. I sat them down and explained to them that it would be selfish of us to try to go to the event to meet ‘Mimi and Papa’ because we’d probably get them sick, and it would also be unfair to their baby sister because she needed the time to rest. As an alternative, we stayed in the house and had a movie day, and spent some time snuggling on the couch. My hope is that they learned about the importance of sacrificing your own fun in order to be considerate of others. (word count: 283) Page 4 of 9

EDUC 601 Log of My Week 10/23– 10/29 My week in the classroom was short but all over the place this week. I substitute taught for orchestra, then I taught a half-of-a-day in the multiple disabilities (MD) room and other half in pre-calculus. Lastly, I finished by teaching in a forensics class on Wednesday and then Thursday I was out because my son was at home sick. The lesson activity that I did with the students on Wednesday gave me an idea that I will put in my back pocket for a later time. Essentially, it was a jigsaw activity in which each member of a table group was assigned to research and create two slides (on a Google Slides document) on a murder case involving fingerprint evidence. They worked on the same document together, although they were working independently on their particular case, and then they had to present to their group at the end of class. After these steps were completed, each member of the group had to submit the group’s collaborative google slides document in Schoology. This was an effective way to hold the students accountable because no student wanted to let their fellow group members down. While it was definitely a great way to keep the kids honest, there was one student that I dealt with that chose not to work and complete his share of the mini-project submission, and basically tried to pawn the work off onto his group members. While I am a substitute, I was not going to let that fly, so I made sure to document it, and let the student know that it was going to be documented and that they’d be accountable to complete their share of the work at home. I figured that, by me doing this, it would encourage the student to make sure they completed the work at home, and that the rest of the group would not lose points because of his unwillingness to work on it during class time. (word count: 320) As mentioned in my professional log entry, we had another illness in our household that really changed the complexion of our week. On Thursday of this week, my son’s daycare called me around 11am to inform us that he was not feeling well, and that he registered a 100.5 degree fever when they took his temperature. Because of the class schedule I had while substitute teaching, I informed them that I could be free to come and pick him up after 11:15, and that meant that I arrived at his daycare around 11:30. When I got there, he ran up and gave me a hug as he normally does and, to my surprise, he was behaving like his normal self and didn’t seem to be ‘under the weather’. The daycare’s policy is to have children stay home for a minimum of 24 hours and be fever-free for that duration of time. This meant that my son would have to stay out until at least 11:30 the following day. I know this policy, so I made sure to take his temperature as soon as we arrived home, and he registered a 97.5-degree temperature. This policy was going to make it so that I would have to miss another day of work (after missing two days last week) and would also eat into my time to be productive with my master’s coursework. I decided that it was wrong for them to prevent me from bringing him in, so I called and asked if I could bring him in at 12pm, and then I ultimately had to request that the site director call their manager to confirm that it was ok (because she was reluctant at first). Working full-time, caring for three young children, and being in four graduate-level classes means that I rarely have time to complete the work that I need to do on a daily basis. There are times that we just need to be assertive and hold people accountable even if they are just enforcing a company policy. Parents have needs too, and they need to be considered along with the needs of the children. (word count: 356) Page 5 of 9

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