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.

As we pulled up to the massive elementary school building, I begged my mom to let me stay home from school, just once. As usual, she said no. Realizing my attempt to get out of school was futile, I shouldered my backpack, swung open the door, and trudged over to the front door. I would rather be anywhere else than here. For the majority of my life, I attended public schools. It wasn’t rare for me to fail a test or even a whole class. It was because of these failures that I would get even more demotivated and threw away the idea of working hard or completing quality work altogether.

My feet hit hard on the cold cement steps as I slightly jogged up to Armstrong hall. I stepped into the old building and saw my classroom right away. No one was in the hall and all I heard was the air conditioner blowing. I entered the room at 20 minutes to six there was only one kid sitting in the back of the room. The room was tiny and plastered white without one pop of color in it. I take a seat in the middle of the desks as they were all facing the front wall that had a huge whiteboard on it. I reached down into my backpack and pulled out a notebook and pencil. As I looked back up more students are starting to fill the room, and the professor walked in. I watched as people walked past me to go sit somewhere else and wondered who it would be that would sit in the empty cold chair next to me. I heard a laptop slammed onto the counter and I looked over at the professor. He had anger written all over his face as he struggled to hook up his laptop. I was expecting him to ask a student if anyone was good with technology and could help him. He did not speak up to ask one of us and he just sat there struggling till he finally gave up.

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 have never experienced more friendship, love, disgust, and sadness at one time than at my time at a Rotary Youth Leadership Award camp (RYLA) this past summer. Everyone said it was not going to be as bad as I thought and that I was over reacting. However, they were only half right. I thoroughly enjoyed every second at RYLA, but I also wished I was at home.

I was given permission to conduct my child study project in PAP community Foundation (Bukit Batok East Education Centre) by Miss Denise Lim, principal of the centre. The teacher present at all my observation sessions was Miss Moriah. All the observation sessions were conducted in a classroom setting in the Hibiscus room. The first two observation sessions were at least an hour long with 15-20 minutes of frontal teaching and another 40 to 45 minutes of classwork in their group tables. The last session was carried out in the same setting but at a different timing with half an hour of snack time and half an hour of emotional awareness session. The frontal teaching part was carried out with the students seated in their groups on the floor facing the teacher and the whiteboard. Students were assigned to carry out their classwork at three different group coloured tables namely, red, yellow and blue.

My philosophy of teaching is deeply rooted in nurturing the potential each and every student in my classes. Providing a creative environment that allows self assessment, growth, group interaction and mentorship are at its very core. Having taught in Higher Education for many years, and as an instructor of Media Arts and Animation, and Game Design, I have had the amazing opportunity to work with some of the brightest and creative young professionals. Teaching has not only broadened my love of art and exploration, but my determination to help students that do not have the confidence to persevere through their education, yet have the passion to follow their dreams.

I didn’t always suffer from anxiety. My childhood was bright and vibrant and rarely was I seen upset or irritated. I’ve played sports my whole life from only 5 years old. Everything from T-ball, to gymnastics, to soccer between the ages of 5 and 12. After school, if I didn’t have practice, I loved to ride my bike or play with my border collie, Molly, on our 5-acre property. When middle school came around, I was the starting server on the volleyball team, I averaged a rough score of 60 for a 9-hole round of golf, and my tall thin build made me a great addition to the basketball team as well. The sky was the limit in my young eyes and I already knew I could achieve great things if I put my mind to it.

Today I had attended my first class of the Summer 2017 semester. I enrolled into the course EDUC 252 for multiple reasons. One reason for taking this course was that it is a requirement for the Bachelor of General Studies (BGS), an undergraduate degree program at Simon Fraser University (SFU), and this course fit perfectly into my busy schedule this current semester. Another reason for my enrolment into the course EDUC 252 was my pursuit of becoming a teacher. I believe this course will help me as a prospective educator with providing me with various opportunities to develop myself as a reflective practitioner. I have been interested in becoming a teacher for as long as I can remember. Unlike many other children who often had a list of aspirations when growing up, I was adamant on the fact that I wanted to become a teacher and would always announce “when I grow up, I want to be a teacher.” I believe this is a result of the positive impact that my former teachers had on my educational experiences. These teachers played a significant role in my life, helping me to build and accomplish my educational goals. Some of these teachers, I still keep in contact with. For example, over the last few months, I have been shadowing and volunteering in my former Kindergarten and Grade 6 and 7 teachers’ current classrooms.

It was a Thursday afternoon around six thirty. I was outside, at my school’s practice field, about to end marching band practice. We were outside packing up ready to go back inside and go home. All of a sudden everyone around me starts to freak out, while they are all looking up at the dark cloudy sky with their jaws dropped. The directors started yelling at us to rush in before our instruments got wet because we all knew what was about to go down just by looking at the sky.

I always thought of myself as someone who was resilient, but after my day of working as a swim teacher that word no longer seemed to describe me. I grew up playing school with my cousins and even taught at my church’s sunday school. I knew that my destiny was to become a teacher, so when the opportunity to teach swim lessons sprung up I was quick to apply. After getting the job and completing training, I couldn't wait to teach my first class

During my years in elementary school, there was time where I was yanked from my other classmates for different types of ridiculous reading comprehension quizzes, passionate passages, and whimsical word recognition test in order to compare my results with those of my age. Those who would pull me out would stick me into a closet sized room and command me to wait for further instructions. To this very day, I can still see the tiny, cramped room with cluttered supply boxes and a dark turquoise, round, semi-circle table standing in the smack center of it. The room would contently smell of sharpened pencil graphite mixed with the stench of newly printed library books and paper cut stings. Although I was never one to read as a child, I have always enjoyed that aged, musty scent, heavily breathing in the intoxicating aroma for my own pleasure. Posters hung from the white, concrete walls with motivational quotes and phrases, such as the phrase “Carpe Diem,” one in which my six-year-old brain couldn’t comprehend at the time. Yet, they were so colorful and eye-catching that I would never actually read the posters themselves, just in awe and amazement. The room was that of a second home to me, a familiar place, once I was done with my tests. However, it was when someone entered that I dreaded ever being there in the first place.

Throughout my observation hours that I completed at South Forsyth Middle School, I learned many things that I can apply to my classroom when I become a teacher. I was cultured inside of the classroom to many new techniques and teaching styles that will be beneficial for my career that is to come. I experienced the classroom in a wide variety due to the different environments I witnessed during my time observing. Taking my experiences from the broad array of students, I now feel more prepared for what lies ahead in my teaching career.

Being in middle school for two years has definitely molded a lot of people to be who they are today. Possibly making some people stronger and some others weaker. Dealing with the pressure middle school had to offer, is something i would definitely skip a million times again. However it was not the teachers, the tests or trying to find your classes, it was mostly just trying to “FIT IN”, and feel like you belonged to some group of any sort. Finding out who you are to me definitely affects how and what people think about you, but on the other hand for some people they do not care about what people think and I definitely was not one of those people.

In middle school, I was a weird, chunky kid. Not that being chunky is weird, I just looked like a little bowling ball with really frizzy hair. Having never really been good at sports, I was never really cool, and neither were my friends. It wasn’t until I saw my friend drawing, that I decided to give it a shot. I knew I wasn’t very good when I started but I didn’t really care. Wanting to get better, so I practiced more and more. At this time I was only in second grade, so I was just grateful that I found something I enjoyed.