Riley 1
Reflection Paper
Amy Riley
Dr. Eastman
November 30, 2010
EDUC 111B: Introduction to Teaching
The teaching field experience this year let me see a whole new side of the teaching profession. In school I always saw teaching as something that was always easy going. This field experience showed me that there are many different viewpoints to teaching. As I journeyed to the Manchester School Corporation, I realized that teaching may be harder than I ever imagined. Through in depth observation, I experienced the different sides of teaching. This helped me better understand and learn more about this profession.
The first day that I walked in Manchester Junior High, I was feeling pretty comfortable. I was placed in an eighth grade math class. When I was a junior and senior, I tutored girls that were in sixth grade through ninth grade math classes. Having this experience made me very confident going into this classroom. I thought that I would know everything that was happening. Although I was aware of the material and how it was being taught, I was not aware of the smart board that the teacher was using. I had never been in a classroom that had one of these. It was nice that this smart board included something that resembled a computer screen. This was a different type of computer screen though. It was placed at the front of the room and the teacher was behind it so she faced her students. She drew on and showed her students how to do the problems step by step on it. The work that she did on the screen in front of her was projected on a big screen so that all of the students could see it. It was also nice to see how the students helped the teacher with using different parts of the smart board that she did not know how to use. It was a teaching and learning experience for both the teacher and the students. I really like this and I hope to have something like this in my classroom someday.
I was also shocked that there were two teachers in the classroom. At first I did not understand the reasoning of this. I later found out that there were several students in her classroom that had disabilities. There is main teacher that is in the classroom all the time and there is also a teacher that comes in to help her throughout the day with classes that have a certain amount of students that need extra help. During these classes the teachers switch from day-to-day on who teaches the lesson and who goes around the classroom making sure that every student understands the lesson and are staying on task. This was very different from anything that I had every experienced. At the school that I attended, students that had disabilities were not allowed in the same classroom with those who did not. I am now aware of how much this helps both the students who are struggling and even those who are not.
The next classroom that I observed was a high school science class. I was not that interested going into that classroom. After sitting through the class, I was glad that I did. It was a class for those who struggle in science. The teacher had to go in depth with everything that he taught. He repeated himself several times to make sure that his students were paying attention and understood the material that he was explaining. He went over the questions that were going to be on the quiz later that day. He showed his students exact problems and what he expected for an answer to receive all of the points. After the quiz, he showed me the students work. Almost every student in the classroom failed the quiz even after he did all of that explaining. I have never been in a classroom that was like this because I was always in accelerated or AP classes. It showed me how much effort that teachers put in without the same from their students.
I really enjoyed the last three field experiences that I attended. I went to an elementary, sixth grade, and a special education class. I loved these classrooms because of the students. They interacted with their teachers a lot. They were always willing and anxious to answer questions. I did not see any behavioral problems even though I know there are times when there are problems. I could not get over of how nice the teachers were. They always had a smile on their faces and they all seemed excited that I was there. This is the kind of teacher that I want to be.
The environment in these classrooms varied quite a bit. In the junior high and the high school, there was not much on the walls and it seemed kind of boring. They had the typical teacher’s desk in the back of the room and the students desks were in rows facing the white board.It was very lecture based. Contrasting with that was the intermediate and elementary school. The teachers that I observed made their classroom feel homey. They had posters everywhere, there were fun signs put up, and they even had their progress on the walls in some way. I liked how the students could look around and see what they had learned and what the rules were for learning them. In these two classrooms the teachers had two desks. They had a desk at the back of the room that seemed to be their work desk. Then they had a desk at the front of the room that was used for interacting with the students. All of the student’s desks were either in pairs or group clusters. They seemed to be classroom that involved the students into their lessons. I was drawn to these two classrooms more than the lecture based classes. I was very shocked about the diversity in the classroom though. There was not a lot of racial diversity in any of the schools that I visited. In my home town there is a lot and so I was going into these field experiences thinking that I was going to get to learn about the different backgrounds of some of the students. I was not able to do this which was okay but it would have been nice to see how the teachers adjusted to these types of differences within their classrooms. Even though I did not get to see racial diversity, I did get to see a lot of educational diversity. I was not prepared for or aware of the idea that students with learning disabilities were placed in classrooms with students who did not have the same disabilities as them. I went to a classroom where the teacher said that the previous year she had a class that was filled with students with disabilities with the exception of one student. I got to talk to her about her struggles with it and how she made it a positive experience by learning from them. It was a good experience getting to see how each of these classroom environments affected their students in different ways.
Lesson planning played a major roll in all of the classrooms that I observed. It was very noticeable to which teachers had their day planned out. I think that this will be the hardest thing to teaching. Making sure that the day is planned out so that there will be time to do everything that I want to will be a struggle. It will be hard to know what will be too much and what will not be enough. I think that this is something that every teacher struggles with when they are just starting. It will be the most time consuming thing that I will do as a teacher and one of the most challenging.
Another important role a teacher must take on is how they interact with their students. All of the classrooms that I observed really got their students involved. They asked questions as they taught a lesson. They made sure that they understood the material and did it in a way that was not boring for their students. In the elementary school it seemed that this was the easiest. The students loved their teacher and this made it easy for her to have fun with her students. She tied in many different lessons into one so that her students could better understand why it was important that they learned what she was teaching. She did it ways that were fun for her students like playing games and doing projects. This helped the students understand the material better because they wanted to learn it and have fun at the same time.
There are a lot of things that I learned from the field experiences. I learned different ways to set up my classroom to make it be a place that my students will want to be. I also realized the different environments and challenges that can be thrown at a teacher at any given time. I got to see the different ways that a teacher can respond and deal with everything that is thrown before them. I now know that I have a lot more learning to do before I become a teacher. I understand how important knowing my students and their strengths and weaknesses are. I also realize that I should make sure that my lesson planning fits in with the needs of every student that I have in my classroom. These field experiences have made me lean more towards teaching a fifth or sixth grade class. I want my classroom to be just as good as the ones that I observed and this has made me eager to learn more.