Essay On Field Experience

Special education teachers make a conscious decision to work on a daily basis with students who display various disabilities. Some of the disabilities include autism, negative social and emotional behaviors, mental retardation, multiple disabilities, mobility disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, as well as students who suffer from being blind and deaf. When these disabilities interfere with the daily educational activities of a child, the child is in need of the valuable opportunities provided in a self-contained classroom.

Not only are these students are a mixture of different grade levels, but they have a mixture of disabilities such as Emotional Behavior Disorder, ADHD, Specific Learning Disabilities in Math/Reading, Mild Intellectual Development, and Speech Impairment. Although my class is small, I am full of students with varying cognitive abilities, maturity levels, and academic strengths and weaknesses. My job is to enhance their academic support in the subject of need because they cannot be fully supported in a general education classroom setting.

I visited PS 181 's language arts classroom for a period of 4 sessions, and stayed 2 hours per visit I recorded notes of interactions between the students/instructors, and my own conversations with the teachers. Since I was observing two classrooms at PS 181, I established a rapport with the teachers to get a clearer understanding about their jobs, asks about the standards that are in place, and whether or not the current structures in place are effective. Both classrooms contained a large amount of students. The middle school has a total of 4 6th grade classes, including a special education classroom of 12 students, 1 teacher, and 1 paraprofessional. The classed I visited included students of mixed proficiency reading, and writing levels. Upon entering these two classrooms on different occasions I noticed the bulletin boards listed classroom procedures. It’s important for the students to have a sense of accountability for their own actions. I also liked that both classrooms established procedures with the students so that when the students failed to follow the procedures they were breaking their own policies.

The special education teacher interviewed, co-teaches algebra into three class periods. She is able to teach up to 50 students. In her classroom she can teach children with disabilities or up to 25 at-risk students.

I have conducted my field of experience at Westside Elementary School, second and third grade classroom. The third grade class consists of 20 students. The teacher does not have any aide even though she needs some assistance, because two of her students are falling behind. The sad part about this is that the students have not being diagnosed yet, but they are having a lot of difficulties. The teacher mentioned that by fourth or fifth grade those two students will need to be placed in a special education classroom. The students both have a concentration problem and it causes them to struggle with reading, writing, math, listening, and speaking. The teacher asked me to

While observing during my fieldwork assignment I had the pleasure of speaking candidly with quite a few teachers. It was Chanel Thompson’s conversation that stood out to me most. It seems we are like minded in many ways. Currently she works at Francis Elementary, a school that is currently plagued with the daunting tasks of trying to enrich not only the academic careers but the lives of its students. Francis Elementary is one of the many Houston schools that services children that fall in the bottom of the lower middle class, in terms of socio economic statuses. Like me, Chanel stated that she picked this profession because of the impact she would have on various children that she would teach from year to year. After teaching for just four short years she still feels the same way. She went on to say “Teaching will be the hardest yet most rewarding job you will ever have.”

My field experience took place at S Bryan Jennings Elementary in Mrs.Reid 's second grade classroom for a little over a month. During my time within the classroom I observed the subjects: reading, mathematics, and phonics, science, and writing. I also observed a teacher planning period. When I was within the classroom I observed the techniques the teacher used in the subjects, the programs used, the children’s abilities with the subject and/or topic, the students struggles within the subject and/or topic, the teachers struggles with students who did not understand, and the stereotypes that applied and/or did not apply to the classroom, teacher, and students. Within this dissertation, I will describe and focus on these observations in a more specific way following with observed examples.

I observed at a daycare called Children's house, I have observed here before and I know the teachers very well. I interviewed a teacher that was formally called Ms. A now called Ms. C who has been working there for 10 years. The Children's house is a private, suburban daycare with 20 children. The room that I observed in is a 3 to 5 year old room. Ms. C had a lot of 3 and 4 year olds. 7 of her children are 3 year olds, 11 are 4 and only 2 are 5 year olds. in her classroom she has 4 children with speech problems and 1 child with a development delay. She has an aid named Ms. M who works with her during the day. Ms. C tries to make their jobs equal, Ms. C teaches lessons and Ms. M teaches other lessons. While they are at center time they have one teacher work on a activity and the other teacher will drift around and insure that the children are behaving well and are out of harm's way.

I choose to do an onsite visit in a resource math class at a middle school for this field project. I was there from 9:30-1:00. The classroom I observed had 2-3 teachers in it at a time. One student teacher, one head teacher and sometimes a teacher that had to help a specific student would be in the classroom. There were about 15 students in the class at a time. Two of which had to have teachers who followed them to every class. I asked the head teacher how many of these students have a learning disability and she said that about three quarters of them have a learning disability. I then asked her why the students might be in the class. She said “Well, because one of two reasons. Students either have hard time learning math the normal way or the normal math class just moves at too fast a pace for them.” She also explained that the middle school had three mainstream math classes for seventh graders and three mainstream math classes for the eighth graders. Each grade had a math class for students at who scored at grade level for math, one for students who scored above grade level for math and one for student who scored slightly below grade level for math. Her students were the ones that scored significantly lower in math. During this field project and interview with the head teacher, I learned and noticed a tremendous amount about how a special education class is run.

On September 8th, I visited our athletic trainer after school for about an hour. During this observation, many athletes’ ankles were wrapped. One of the football players waited to get an ultra sound on his right ankle. An ultrasound is commonly used to look at problems with soft tissue. The ultrasound works by focusing high-frequency sound waves on the specific location on the ankle that contains soft tissue. The sound waves then bounce off the bones and soft tissues and are picked up by the transducer. Chad, the school athletic trainer first put gel on the probe and massaged the athlete’s ankle for about six minutes. After the ultrasound, Chad wrapped both of the athlete’s ankles. He started by putting pre-wrap on the foot and ankle to prevent

I did my summer fieldwork at Lambertville Academy in Lambertville, NJ, where I observed a Pre-K class. All of the students in this class will be moving on to Kindergarten in September. I’m grateful for the things I learned and the time I spent in this placement. My time at Lambertville Academy allowed me to better understand the theories taught in the early childhood education class I took, as well as myself and my goals as a future educator.

Upon shadowing a fourth grade teacher at Deer Ridge Elementary School, I decided to talk with her about the students in her classroom. Mrs. Riley first set the scene of the school for me by stating that it was in the southwest suburban area of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and this particular school was not hurting for money. She then began to explain the different children in her classroom. There were twenty-eight students from a variety of different backgrounds. There were also two students with ADHD. My first thought was, "What exactly is ADHD?" and, "Would these two children stick out from the rest of the students in the classroom?".

My Field Experience was conducted by an interview with a Detective and former police officer Shane Marshall. We had a conversation about if he enjoyed his job and if he had more good experiences than bad experiences or if it had been more bad than good. He talked about even though he did have bad experiences, he had more good experiences over bad ones. He explained how it takes a little to get use to seeing the things that you come across in this line of work. He believes that once you get use to the line of work then the job can become enjoyable.

For instructional strategies used for specific groups, I decided to place students into groups based on their ability level, and then partners based on behaviors. Group One was chosen with the intention of being a Special Education Student group only, however two other students had to be added to the group due to low scores on pre-assessments. The students, in Group One, were further divided into groups of three (because there were nine students). Students were placed in these groups of three based on positive behaviors that students had shown one another. Group Two was chosen with the intention of being students who understood the material, but were still having difficulty arriving to the correct answer or using the correct steps. Their partner

Ray Le Blond has been able to consolidate my thoughts about my fieldwork experience appropriately, thus, “You learn something every day if you pay attention”. I was going to Kachra Vahatuk Shramik Sangh (KVSS), Thane as part of my fieldwork on contract labours working in Thane Municipal Corporation in Solid Waste Management Department for the second semester. Little did I know that going among the contract labours and learning about them would inspire, educate and transform me. When I was initially informed that as part of my research methodology course I would be expected to engage in field work I was equally atingled as I was timorous. Even though I had been involved in a couple of internships after my graduation, I knew this was going to be disparate. After all, this was Tata Institute of Social Sciences where everything from the DH menu to the pet dogs on campus are treated with sobriety; field work being a prerequisite would be no different.