What Should I Be Doing Now to Prepare for My First Classroom?

Organizations

1. SEA 
• State Conferences ~ one per semester (including one at WIU). For the conference in another city, you can stay over night, inexpensively through the SEA.
• local meetings: 1/month guest speakers
2. ICTM Regional Conference at WIU:
• Attend
• Be a presider
• Be a presenter.
3. ICTM State Conference Friday & Saturday in October. 100's of sessions, exhibit area (free stuff)
• Free transportation and $10 toward the $15 registration fee paid by WIU Math Dept.
4. Present at a Conference
5. Join Math TEAM
• Monthly meetings, food, useful activities.
• Inexpensive membership paid to secretary in MERO (Math Education Resource Office - MG 209).
6. Join the MAA.
7. Take on leadership roles in student groups.
8. Join ICTM (Illinois Council of Teachers of Mathematics).  Student membership $15.
9. Join NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics).  Student membership reduced.

Stuff to Get

1. Keep a Wish List of resource books, software, and stuff you'd like to have to prepare yourself to be a teacher
• Have the list handy around birthdays, Christmas, and especially graduation for family and relatives (unless you just want a WIU paperweight).
2. Collect Books
• garage sales
• book orders
• free books laying in the halls
• library used book sales
• Tell relatives not to throw books away.
3. Websites - collect bookmarks (and organize them)
4. Make manipulatives (even a classroom set) in MERO, using the die-press before you leave campus.
5. You can buy manipulative starter sets (comes in a nice carrying bag) from ETA or Cuisenaire.
6. NCTM Starter Kit (cheap)
7. Lesson plans
• Organize in a filing cabinet ~ organize by topic ~ keep on disk (and backed up)
8. "Junk" boxes
• caps from dried up markers, coffee filters, Happy Meal toys, buttons, free stuff, etc.
9. Go to big school supply stores when visiting Peoria, Quad Cities, etc.
10. Get on the mailing list of a company that sells teacher resources and manipulatives.  MERO has catalogs from most companies.  Just call the 800 number on the catalog and give them your address.
11. Get on the mailing list to get free newsletter (which include learning activities) from Texas Instruments (www.ti.com, then go to calculators).

Experiences

1. Summer camp counselor
2. Tutor in MERO (for pay), or individually (WIU or K-12 students).
3. Tutor for the Math Dept. (for pay).
4. America Counts - after school program (Mon. and Tues.) Edison School 4-6 grades
5. Volunteering at the Macomb Park District
6. Make a website
• links for your own use
• links that your students might use
7. Coaching
8. Babysitting
9. Work at the Day Care Center
10. At WIU, students do not get a field experience in every subject area. Look for ways to do a "field experience" in the other subject areas.
• Go to schools on breaks
• Ask to do this in your block.
• Volunteer at a school.
• Volunteer for after school tutoring.
11. Project WILD, WET, and LEARNING TREE. ($4)

The purpose of this list is help teacher education students

• make the transition from formal college coursework to actual teaching,
• help them see easy things they can do now to make student teaching and their first classroom position easier and more successful,
• get experience (that can be put on a resume).

This list was prepared by the Math TEAM and Dr. Jim Olsen (298-2317 jr-olsen@wiu.edu).