week 9

       Today, marks one week since the Chicago's Teachers Union went on strike. According to the student-teacher handbook,  "when a strike occurs in a school serving as a clinical site for Trinity Education Unit teacher candidates, Trinity teacher candidates will be non-participants, siding with neither party." As a result, all I want to say about the situation is that I hope that both parties come to a fair agreement soon because I miss the kiddos. I will, however, share how this experience is affecting my personal student teaching experience. 

    Early on in the school year news spread about a potential strike. I wasn't too worried about it at first because I have worked for CPS in the past and every year the news of a potential strike would come up in conversations, and then nothing really escalated from thereon. However, as time went by I started to realize that the possibility of a potential strike was very REAL. Then, I began to worry and I was experiencing a lot of anxiety. I felt like I was under a lot of pressure to accomplish so much in such a short amount of time. I started my student teaching experience later than most of the other teacher candidates because CPS starts the school year later. I felt like from the get-go I was already behind in comparison to the other candidates. The first week of my student teaching experience I mostly observed, but then I decided that I had to speed things up. So, I started teaching fairly early in my placement. I started working on lesson planning and I focused more on establishing a relationship with the students and teacher and I placed the edTPA on hold. Nevertheless, I was always thinking about it and feeling the pressure. Finally, when I finished completing the required 30 lessons for the Trinity class I felt like I could focus on the edTPA more. 

     I rushed to prepare and record my lessons before the potential strike date, and now I am trying to complete the writing portion before the deadline on Monday. I'm worried about the quality of my videos, but I have to work with what I got. I feel like I definitely underestimated how long it would take to complete the writing portion of the dTPA. It isn't hard, but it is very time-consuming. I find it very difficult to focus when I'm around other people, so I do feel a bit fortunate to be able to work on the edTPA alone (at home) during this time off. My supervisor told me that I needed to look at this experience and strike as a blessing, and I definitely am seeing this experience with different eyes. 

   Apart from this, I am starting to worry about making up my student teaching days. I didn't financially plan to student teach after December 12th. Money is really tight right now and I'm going to be reaching out to my professor to discuss a temporary reassignment if the strike does continue. My goal for this week is just to complete the edTPA before the deadline on Monday.