Nearing the End of my days in Kindergarten

What a pleasure it has been working in the Kindergarten class of Alison Bennett. I have grown to love this class and am sad that my time in their is over. What I have learned in my time in the classroom with this grade is the value of a relationship with your students. Caring about what a student is passionate about, or how they connect in the classroom is important to learn early on. Mrs. Bennett showed me how to really connect with the students, and in the end I really started to feel like a teacher. I was really nervous in the beginning about if the students would like me or not. I didn't go to the class every single day, but when I did come, they were always excited that I was there to help out with class. That felt really good to me that they anticipated me coming to class, and were overjoyed when I was there.
I have made a list of goals of what I want to strive to accomplish during the next 2 years as I enter the program this fall. The kind of teacher I want to be perceived as, what accomplishments I want to make for myself as a student, and gain a sense that I am a new teacher. Testing strategies, classroom management, and what it means to be a teacher, are all fresh on my mind as I enter my cohort and I am making it a goal to never lose that mindset of what it is like to be in a classroom. Mrs. Bennett really helped me learn in her classroom with all of the different ways a teacher can go through a lesson or activity. We sat in the other kindergarten classrooms some days when the students had joint activities. I learned that every teacher is different, and how they run their classrooms is completely their style. I looked forward to certain teachers when I was in grade school, and I have made it a goal, to try and be one of those teachers that students get excited about.
I have learned so much in this class and saved so many power points and lessons. I can't wait to see what it is like, when I have a classroom of my own.

School "Rules"

Helping out in the classroom and learning classroom procedures that Mrs. Bennett enforces with her students. Some of them are basic school rules concerning hallway etiquette and library. When the students don't bring back one of their books, they cannot check out a new one. The students always get excited to get a new book they can pick out themselves. It is part of the school curriculum to read grade level books, so the kids are learning and growing with books they decide to read. When they don't follow the rules to bring their books back however, they don't get to pick out a new book, so then they are motivated to always bring them back.
One of the procedures I love that Mrs. Bennett uses in her classroom is something I refer to as "quiet as a mouse". She has a little mason jar candy dispenser that is filled with skittles, and there are two wooden mice on a lever at the bottom. When we all sit at the carpet, or it is time to be quiet and listen to instructions, she will pick a student and say "(Students Name) is being quiet as a mouse".  When she says this, the appropriate student knows that they get to go over to her desk, and move the lever over once, which will dispense a couple skittles. When I saw how the kids reacted with this procedure in the classroom, I started looking up little contraptions like this because I want to do something like this with my future students as well! When classroom procedures are implemented, it builds a great flow in the teacher, and the students gain a lot more respect for school. It has gotten me thinking a lot about the kind of impact I want to make as a teacher, and brainstorming procedures of my own.