Field Experience Paper

The classroom I watched gave off an impression of being a decent quality classroom. The room had a lot of

There seemed to be a trend of exceptionalities among all grade levels that included learning disabilities and hard of hearing students. I was made aware of these exceptionalities on the first day because modifications had to be made for these specific students. I also noticed the class sizes very quickly, with most tutors, myself included, only having two or three students to a tutor. I have always experienced and heard about overcrowded classrooms, and while this was not your typical classroom setting, I appreciated the opportunity to have a more personal approach with my students. Having lower class sizes means that the teacher has more time to connect with their students on a more personal level to better meet each student’s individual needs. I think that

In my field hours, I experienced firsthand on how complex the adolescent years of someone’s life can be. The middle school years of a student’s life come with physical changes, emotional changes and changes in the hierarchy of things important to them. Peer influence becomes a large part of their life and many of the decisions they make is based on peer approval and relationships with their peers. I also experienced the difficulties of diversity can bring into the classroom. Diversity is important and it is great thing to have in the school but how does a teacher mediate it? I noticed how difficult that can be sometimes. I also experienced the technicalities of discipline. When is the right time to hand out discipline and what kind of punishment fits this crime? All of these things I experienced in my field hours I thought of before the experience but never realized the importance of them.

This field experience this semester has been a rollercoaster, but fulfilling. This learning experience has allowed me to experience a full day in a school and a full day of teaching. Although sometimes it was stressful, it has been worthwhile for myself and for my students at Springfield Elementary. At the start of the semester, I was ecstatic to be placed in second grade, but by the end of the course, I was more than ready to be done with second grade. I realized that I did not like the topics covered in second grade, which made it hard for me to teach them. Nevertheless, I preserved through my doubts and dislikes, and finished my last field experience before clinical practice. Throughout this field course, I have been able to set

Currently, I am placed in a first-grade classroom at Fairview Elementary School for my field experience. I am scheduled to come every Thursday from 8:30 to 10:00 am. When I arrive most of the students have put their bags away, and are playing with toys until 8:40. Once it is time to clean up at 8:40, they all settle down to do morning work on the Smartboard until 9:00. After morning work they split off into their assigned groups, which is when I take groups of three or four students to the cafeteria to do Word Work. Word Work is a section of their day when the teacher gives me different worksheets for them to work on. The worksheets involve games that incorporate their vocabulary they are learning for the week. There are three groups that rotate coming to the cafeteria with me for twenty minutes within the hour that I am still there.

For my field experience, I attended the Westport Board of Education meeting held on Monday, November 27 at Staples High School from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. The Board of Education members present at the meeting were Michael Gordon, Jeannie Smith, Elaine Whitney, Mark Mathias, Karen Kleine, Vik Muktavaram, and Candice Savin. On the agenda for the evening was: public session and saying the pledge of allegiance, election of officers of the board of education, announcements from the board and administration, public questions and comments on non-agenda items, reading the minutes from past meetings, presentations, discussion, updates, committee reports, and adjournment. The presentations included the NESDEC ten year enrollment projections and an overview of the role of learning walks in the Westport Public Schools. The discussion was on revised homework guidelines. The updates were on the health and medical insurance revenues and expenses and projected end of the year balance in the health reserve account. At this meeting, I saw examples of the competing visions of the purpose of education, educational priorities, educational philosophies, and how issues such as technology are part of the educational conversation.

A positive classroom environment is a key factor in ensuring student success, we all preform best in an atmosphere where we feel comfortable. A classroom environment is more than the physical space, although that plays a critical part, it’s the way being in that space makes the student feel. Currently, I am the long-term substitute for a High School Math II class. While no one element that creates a positive classroom environment, it is crucial to ascertain the needs of the students and structure the classroom to meet those needs.

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” ― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics. Experiential learning is more than watching a teacher in the classroom; it is learning about the passion of education and how to provide students with the tools and inspiration they need to excel. During my experiential learning, I was in three different classrooms: kindergarten, first grade, and second grade. Each classroom was arranged differently to accommodate the students, the kindergarten classroom was arranged more like a Montessori classroom with activities on shelves. The first grade classroom was traditional style with a large carpet for whole group discussion and grouped desks for collaborative and individual work. The second grade classroom was also traditional style with the addition of flexible seating, as well as a large carpet for who group learning. In the kindergarten classroom, they focused on sight words and forming sentences. The first grade classroom mainly consisted of learning about living things and how animals use their structures to get food, as well as individual time for handwriting. The second grade classroom worked mostly on the expanded form of numbers and finding more than one solution to solve a problem, as well as practicing math facts, time, and spelling/writing narratives. The majority of students in all the classrooms were achieving at or above grade level. The students that I worked with in kindergarten were having

During my field experience I learned a lot about what it means to not be a student in the classroom. It is a different point of view when you are observing a teacher and helping the kids instead of being the one asking for help. I was at Proctor High School observing a 9th grade Physical Science class. I didn’t like some of the things about the environment of the classroom, but I think the teacher was still able to get the proper information across. The classroom itself is small and does not really provide technological education advances that I have seen many other schools have. The classroom was also limited in space, which affects both the teacher and students.

As a middle school teacher you must be prepared to articulate your viewpoint on issues relative to education, young adolescent development, middle school structure and organization, curriculum, instruction, and assessment, classroom management, family and community involvement, and leadership and organizations. It is sometimes important that teachers within a team, subject area, grade division, or school building come to a consensus of thought and practice for the sake of providing the best, enriched educational environment for the success of students

If there’s any one thing that I genuinely enjoy about my observation time in various classrooms, it must be the exposure to so many different schools of thought and techniques when it comes to running/managing a class. I have seen my share of teachers and age groups over the past couple of years, and it never ceases to amaze me how each one of the teachers can put their own little twist on how the class functions. As a result of these various techniques, I have been fortunate enough to see a wide assortment of teaching strategies, student responses, and assessments put to use.

My initial impression of the classroom was that it was very well organized and that the atmosphere was very welcoming. The classroom has very clearly defined center areas; they have gross motor, art, science, manipulative, and a quiet space for the students. They also have a very large television

For field experience I was at Touching Hearts Daycare in Lincoln, Nebraska. I have worked there for 4 summers now. I worked with Henry who is in preschool, he is 5 years old. It was a fun experience and to see the change of how other kids reacted to him, how other workers reacted to him and how even I reacted to him as the time changed. It was rewarding to work with him but it was also difficult to get around his disability. Lastly, it was a good experience, looking back know it will impact the way I teach others in the future.

For my field experience I worked with two eighth graders at Madison Middle School in Trumbull, CT. At some points during the course of the class I worked one-on-one with them in the library and at other times I worked with them in the classroom together. Madison Middle School is a sixth through eighth grade school with about 871 students in total. The teacher to student ratio is fairly small at approximately 1-13. The school has about half females and half males while their racial enrollment is varied. There are 733 Caucasians, 61 Asians, 50 Hispanics, and 29 African Americans (USA School Info). The classroom I specifically worked in was an eighth grade pre-algebra class with twenty four students. There contained a mixture of all races in this classroom, approximately two females and one male who were Asian, the two girls who were Hispanic that I worked with, a few males that were also Hispanic, and the rest were dominantly White.

While I observed at Chamberlin, I got the opportunity to teach three lessons. I taught a health, math, and reading lesson. With all of my lessons, I decided to incorporate art into the lesson. Throughout all of my observations, I have observed that students are more engaged, eager, and willing to do the lesson when it involves a hands-on activity. The first lesson