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Explain the most challenging part during your field experience.

The most challenging part of field experience for me was the sense that I was missing part of the day, every day. I think there are two things going on here. First, I just genuinely enjoyed being in the classroom with the kids and wanted to spend as much time as possible without seeming like a nutjob. This irrational fear of missing out has little to do with being a professional teacher. The second thing is that I felt like I never had an accurate, whole picture of how a student was doing in a day. We were scheduled to come in late morning right before lunch and stay through the end of the day, and I often found myself wishing I had been there first thing in the morning so I could see how a particular student seemed when he or she first got to school. I felt that my arrival later in the day, when so much had already happened, prevented me from accurately assessing how students were responding to my teaching and interactions with them. I felt like I lacked the background knowledge I would have gotten if I had been able to see their body language and facial expressions and the way they greeted me in the morning when they got to school. 

Explain your greatest success during your field experience.

I felt my greatest success lay in the habits and learning culture I tried to establish within the small group of students I worked with daily during math reteach. Some of these students belonged in our cooperating teacher's class; other students came from some of the other sixth-grade classrooms. When I worked with our small group, I asked the students to follow the procedure of reading the math problem aloud, then stating their answer and how they got that answer. I had a group of 3-4 students, and we took turns answering the problems on the sheet every day. I took a turn myself; I felt that it was important for me to model what I was asking them to do. After the first or second day, when the students would gather in the classroom for reteach, I noticed that the same students were gravitating toward my area of the room. They smiled and seemed relaxed around me; they seemed happy to be there. 

What recommendations would you make to others based on your field experience?

Don't hesitate--jump in with both feet! I was really nervous right before field started. I worried that I was going to bomb. I gave myself a pep talk the night before, and when I showed up the first day I smiled, volunteered to help the cooperating teacher whenever I could, and began establishing personal relationships with the students. I had most of their names learned by the start of the second day. I guess what I realized is that no one expects me to be perfect. Actually, no one expects me to have any idea what I'm doing because I have never done this before. I think what I'm trying to say is that the best tool to take into field is a good attitude and positive expectations for the experience.

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Most Challenging: The most challenging thing about my field experience was classroom management. I love to have order and realizing that a lot of these kids are going to do whatever they want regardless of what I say was difficult. It was hard to try and change or implement something for such a short period of time.

Greatest Successes: I think that we got these kids to better understand Long Division. We worked hard with these students and some were really struggling with the concept. It was such a great experience to work with these students and literally watch the light bulb go off.

Recommendations: My recommendation is to just do your try your best and love the kids. I may not be the best teacher or most knowledgeable but I hope that my students will always know how much I care about them and hope I can help them succeed. 

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November 14, 2013--This afternoon for writing the students began working on prewriting for their descriptive essays. The topic for the descriptive essay was a personal hero, someone they knew personally who they admired. They were given a prewriting graphic organizer that had three columns for physical, personality, and character traits of their hero. The teacher told them they had to list at least 3 traits for each category. When the students began working on their organizer, I began walking around the classroom answering questions about how to spell words and other things. 

One of the students had a question that stumped me. She asked what the difference is between personality and character traits. Even though the teacher modeled when she was giving instructions, the difference between the two was unclear to the students and to me. The teacher had a difficult time articulating the difference herself. She ended up referring to the teacher manual of the writing textbook before giving the students a definitive answer. 

This experience was unsettling to me because usually when a student asks me a question I have a basic idea of the answer, I just have to find age-appropriate words to communicate my answer. But this time I didn't have the basic idea. It was uncomfortable for me. What made it worse was that I didn't come straight out and say "I don't know, let me ask the teacher," or "I don't know, let me check the textbook." I don't usually have a problem admitting that I don't know, but for some reason I didn't come clean and admit it. I think it may have something to do with the subject. I tend to think I can BS my way through writing and English. If the question had been in math or science, I would probably have been more straightforward at admitting I didn't know.

Second Post

November 8, 2013--Today our cooperating teacher stayed home sick; she had begun losing her voice and coughing like crazy for the last several days. When I left for at the end of the day on yesterday she said she was probably going to get a sub for today. She got a substitute teacher she often uses, a friend of hers she calls first whenever she needs a sub. The substitute's name was Mrs. Peterson. On this day the students had the chance to use the school's Chromebooks to type up final drafts of their opinion essays. The previous few days they had been prewriting and drafting opinion essays. (They had been asked to write persuasively about which was better, books or movies based on books.) 

By way of backstory, the district has recently begun placing an emphasis on email communication for the students. They have sent home communication with parents with instructions and plans for what they want the students to be able to do. The district uses Google Apps for Education, and all the students have their own nebo.edu email address that is hosted by gmail. The students are all being encouraged to begin using their nebo.edu email address to access Google Drive and the other educational apps that are offered by Google. In theory, this is a wonderful idea. But it's not such a great thing when the students can't remember their username and/or password and can't login!

Right as I got there a few students were wheeling the cart with the Chromebooks and were getting them all out. Each student had a beautiful shiny silver laptop, and most were successfully logging in and getting to work typing up their final draft. 

The students had 60 minutes with the computers, and what I noticed during the hour was that there were some students who had their drafts completely typed up and finished within 30 minutes and some who wasted most of the time doing other things. There were students who had problems logging in. One student in particular, a student who struggles significantly getting any of his work done ever, spent 20 minutes trying to log in. Mrs. Peterson and I both began trying to help him log in. Finally he found the paper with his username and password in his desk, and he realized he had been typing his username incorrectly. 

It became apparent that some students had been goofing off earlier in the week when they were supposed to be prewriting and drafting. Their teacher had spent the previous three writing lessons giving them time to draft their essays, but for whatever reason some students had failed to produce a first draft before the class's scheduled time with the Chromebooks. These students were given instructions that they were not to use the computers but instead spend the time with paper and pencil coming up with a draft. The teacher wanted them to have a handwritten, double-spaced draft before sitting down at the computer. 

Later on as the hour progressed, many of the students began sending each other instant messages and chatting via gmail. Mrs. Peterson instructed them that they were to use the computers only for writing their drafts. Some students protested, saying they should be able to do other things because they had finished typing their essays. I could see their point, but it seemed like a bad idea. Mrs. Peterson and I both agreed that they should get off the computers if they were finished and read or do something else quietly at their desks.

At the end of the day Mrs. Peterson and I taught the students a science lesson about the seasons using a video clip that was saved on the teacher's computer. Mrs. Peterson had gotten the video queued up earlier, but it wouldn't play. Mrs. Peterson didn't seem to know what to do about it. I went over to the computer and was able to start up Task Manager, stop and restart Windows Media Player, find the correct file, and play it. I felt good about the fact that I was able to get it working, and Mrs. Peterson seemed relieved too. She looked panicked there for a minute, I'm sure because she wasn't sure what she was going to do with the class for 30 minutes without the video.

First Post

November 6, 2013--I can describe my response to my first day in the classroom in one word: Disorienting. I think the first day placed me in a state of disequilibrium. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First I'll describe the events that happened.

When I first got there, the class was finishing up morning work. They worked on a science quiz about the stars; passed off some math facts for Knights of the Math Table; and corrected the previous day's math homework, which was about integers and whole numbers. The teacher then started guided reading. She called several reading groups back to the half-circle-shaped table at the back of the classroom and worked with groups. She asked various students to read aloud and kept a tally in her gradebook, which she called a running record and said we would learn about that next semester in literacy. 

In some of the reading groups the students handed in completed book reports. The teacher had given them a few options for their assignment, and she asked the students to explain to the group which option they chose and why. This was my favorite part of the day. I appreciated being able to see the way the teacher allowed the students to self-differentiate by choosing from a variety of reporting methods. I was thrilled to get a chance to look at what the individual students came up with. The students were allowed to choose between writing a letter from one character to another; creating a newspaper page featuring one of the events in the book; or drawing an 8-frame cartoon depicting a scene in the book. This is one of my favorite things about teaching--participating in students' individual responses and seeing their personalities emerge through their creative output. 

As I got ready to go the morning of the first day I struggled with feeling ill at ease. I wondered how I should act, if I should speak or just observe, and how to go about making a good impression. Because it was a half day of school, we were scheduled to be there first thing in the morning. I got there around 8:45 a.m. and asked the teacher if there was anything I could do to help (school starts at 9 a.m.). She looked surprised and explained that she wasn't used to having any help, so she'd have to think about it for a minute. I feel good about this; it seemed like it helped me start off on the right foot. 

With regard to what didn't work or what I would change, I can't think of many things. I wish I had felt more comfortable with the students that first day, but there really is no way to naturally accelerate that process. It just takes time to ease into things, get to know students as individuals, adjust to the pacing of the day, and feel comfortable with the classroom milieu. It's kind of a honeymoon period. I suspect it will be much the same for the first few months of the school year when I'm teaching on my own.

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Most Challenging: The most challenging thing about my field experience was classroom management. I love to be in control and realizing that a lot of these kids are going to do whatever they want regardless of what I say was difficult. I knew these kids had it in them to focus but sometimes they were distracted by others or they let their confusion for the subject take over. A lot of the kids would get stuck on something and then shut down.

Greatest Successes: I think that we got these kids to really care about what they were learning about in social studies. We did a petroglyph/pictograph activity and then "someone" came by and graffiti-ed our art so the students were able to experience first hand how it feels when someone vandalized their work. I thought this was a huge success because if you can get the students to care, I think they have really internalized the information.

Recommendations: My recommendation is to just do your best and be real with the kids. Sometimes I would get really nervous but I needed to remember I am a first semester junior and I won't be perfect. I won't even be perfect when I am a teacher. Just be honest with yourself and your students and you will be successful!

Final Post

Most Challenging:
I think the most challenging part of field was making sure that my lesson was good enough by the time I had to teach it. I am pro-procrastinator and it definitely would help to get better at preparing ahead of time. Also feeling confident that my lesson will help them at the final year end test puts a lot of pressure on the lesson.  You want to make everything you teach memorable, but that can be very expensive and time consuming. Finding a good balance is one thing I hope to work on and get better at as I continue learning.

My Greatest Success:
Was the love and joy I received from the class.  I knew I was interested in being a teacher, but after seeing the students faces light up when they understood a problem brought it to a whole new level.  Being able to even come up with my own lesson was a great accomplishment to me, and it got me really excited to expand my creativity in my future classroom and see what fun lessons I can come up with.  I know for sure that teaching is what I want to do and that it is going to be a great place for me.

My Recommendations:
I think being first semester students we think we have to have it all figured out and have to be perfect.  We have to remember we are just starting out and learning.  Take the time to observe, and listen to any advice that teachers give you. Having confidence in our self will make a huge difference.  Also, I think we need to learn to limit ourselves.  Dr. Jay told us already that we need to remember it is just a lesson in our unit plan as a whole. We can do great things already, but we have to keep growing.