My Personal Experience : My Experience In The Classroom

During my instructor led field experience, I was placed in a first grade classroom. The teacher in this classroom really had a great grasp on management in her classroom. She used the Classdojo app. The teacher had the option to award student points or take them away throughout the day. This was also an app that kept parents informed on their devices of how their child was doing throughout the day. I really enjoyed seeing this in real life. Hearing about this app in management or technology didn't do it justice. The students really were aware of the points and managed their behavior.

Today, December 9, 2017, the date of my first ever final exam in a, full semester, college class. This marks a very exciting but stressful time for me.

I frequently tell the same story to my friends when we go biking, so often that they know the same details as me. With the hundreds of memories I carry with me, this is the one that is remembered with the most detail. This story is always told with eagerness as it shows a large part of how I was as a kid.

As I walked into an American classroom for the first time I was amazed. There were bright posters everywhere. A snack station, napping area, and play station. Right in the middle, there was a huge round rug with words that were foreign to me. It looked more like a huge play area rather than a classroom. I was nervous yet excited. When I entered my classroom, my dad said: “Sub Kuch say, Hoga,” (everything will be fine) in Urdu. I didn't have a wide variety of vocabulary in Urdu either, but those four words made me feel safe. As my dad was about to leave me, I began to get a jittery feeling. Class finally started. “A is for Apple, B is for Boy.” As a 4-year-old with no concept of English those words were foreign to me. Not understanding what my teacher or anyone around me was saying frightened me. After being confused and having no idea of what was going on this lady walked into the room with a smile that brightened my day. She started to speak to me in Urdu, and I didn’t feel scared anymore. I had someone who would understand me, and I could understand her.

I had a wonderful experience during my time at Mr. Palmieri’s sixth grade classroom at Woodrow Wilson School in Bayonne, New Jersey. Mr. Palmieri teaches three separate sixth grade classes of Mathematics. He and his students were very welcoming which generally increased my inspiration to teach and pursue my career in education. While completing my field experience, I believe that I have fully grown professionally and academically.

In school, I have always been a relatively successful student, and I was always considered one of the smarter kids by my parents and a lot of the other students. In about sixth grade when they started to split the grade up into certain classes for the “advanced” kids and the kids that weren’t considered advanced. I was in the classes with all the kids that weren’t considered advanced. At the time though, I didn’t realize what they were doing or that I wasn’t actually considered a smart kid by the school, I just knew all my friends were in classes I wasn’t in, and it really upset me. I got put in the classes with a bunch of kids I didn’t like, or just people I didn’t know, and had never seen before. I still had the bus where I got to see a few of my friends, but other than that, they just weren’t around.

Today when I got to school, I took time to walk around and talk to students about their weekends. Mrs. Prioreschi is big on letting kids express themselves and share things, and this time is perfect for allowing them to do that. After they got settled, I played their morning show on the computer for students to watch. Computer class was next and they were in a new programming software called coding with legos. I got taught how to complete a full set so could help students when they run into obstacles along the way. When we got back to the classroom, they got to have a mental brain break. This is where students stand up and mirror a dance to a song the teacher projects. It was so much fun because I got to see student’s personalities come out through this.

Going into English 111 in August, I had no idea what to expect. This was my first experience of college classes, and walking into the classroom on the first Tuesday of the semester, all I knew was it was going to be different. As the class period went on, however, we were introduced to Moodle and then the seven student learning outcomes. These made the goals of the class clearer to me.

“Welcome Class to Composition one.” Those words were voiced by my professor, Mrs. Robinson, on the first day of school. Initially, I thought to myself, do I even belong in this college course class. Before school had even begun, the stress over the summer about my English skills was eating me alive. Why? Well, in my past English classes I received A’s on all of my essays, but this college class did not seem so easy. Also, I was always fascinated by all the arts and sciences, but English never struck interest in me. I never thought that I could write any decent essays. The reason I insecure about my writing skills was because of the ACT. Since the ACT is the talk about how smart an individual is, my ACT score was not very high. As the course continued, the first essay approached quickly. I remember being stressed about this essay because of my writing insecurities. Although I managed to acquire a decent grade, I promised myself to strive to make myself a better writer. I started to read Norton Field Guide to Writing handbook also known as the yellow book, and slowly but surely started to develop knowledge of good writing skills and tips to improve my essays. This allowed me to grow as a writer and slowly my insecurities started to dwindle, and I began to gain confidence in myself. I never would've thought that the next time I took the ACT that my English score would be my highest. When getting my score back and realizing that I had improved so much, I began to wonder how I

1. What was your experience as a student teacher? Did you find yourself getting attached to the children in the classroom? Were you skeptical in the beginning? As a student teacher, what was the most efficient advice you received from the former teacher? What was your biggest dilemma in student teaching?

My practicum placement school is small and in an older building within a small town. According to my clinical supervisor, the majority of students are Caucasian and more than half receive free lunch. The administrative staff seems highly focused on literacy and test scores, but have not seen good results in the past. The teachers often voice concerns over the lack of support from the administration.

When thinking about my past and current experiences in the classroom as a student, I can see how these planning techniques, especially beginning with the end in mind, can create success in teaching and learning. Often times, as a student, we do not realize how intentional our teachers are. While I cannot recall much from my earlier educational experiences, in high school, there was often a specific objective for learning that we knew of either the week before or at the beginning of the week. We could come in to a completely different classroom arrangement, new materials up on the wall, or even given a packet that would outline what we will be learning and doing that day (Lemov, 2015).

Over the past month in my classroom, I feel as if I have learned and observed an almost overwhelming amount of interactions, situations, etc. It seems that it should not have been possible to learn so much in such a short amount of time. However, I firmly believe that these observations have allowed me to add to my experiences and knowledge regarding my future in this career field. Coming into this internship program, my main goal was to learn how to teach lessons. My focus was geared towards learning methods and strategies that would help aid students towards the best path of success. While I still feel adamant about the importance of those methods and strategies, my time in this classroom over the past month has opened my eyes to

Our lesson began with our scenario, “own a theme park and heard that you guys could help us create a waterslide. Our waterslide needs to be fast and fun, but also safe. People can’t get injured while sliding and must make it to the bottom of the pool.” Students were shown the video that gave them different examples of waterslides to help spark their personal connections and background knowledge. During the video students laughed and commented about the twists and turns. They were shown their materials and the constraints were explained to them. Such as they only had a certain amount of time, they only had so many materials, it needed to be safe, it needed to look like a slide, etc. The students were excited to get started and once they

One of the most daunting lessons I learned from my student teaching is that not everyone does their jobs in the manner in which is helpful or beneficial for others. My cooperating teacher left me for twelve weeks to fend for myself, which only taught me survive, not thrive. Although I did a decent job, had I had guidance and support, I could have done even better.