Changing Landscape

 At St. Gabriel’s the classroom I was in over the field days very diverse school. There were many different cultures and nationalities throughout the classroom. The teacher would help all the students learn and if they needed additional help to understand she would help them understand in whichever way made sense for them. St. Gabriel’s is a very full school but didn’t have EA’s, which I had found really strange as the students would benefit from it if they were available there.

      There were numerous EAL learners in the classroom however many were extremely fluent in English. There was one student from Vietnam that had only came to Canada a couple of weeks after the school year. I am not certain if he had additional help on other days where I wasn’t there but, on the Tuesday’s, I was there was none. He did however learn an impressive amount of English over the weeks as he was able to both noticeably understand and speak more and more English every week at an impressive rate.

      The teacher herself was very accepting and treated all the students differently. She herself had told us she was from Ukraine so it would also help for her to understand the place her students are coming from. She was able to both help and all the students based off what additional help they needed or knew which way to calm a student down if they got riled up.

Final Field Reflection

Hey Guys,

      For my field experience I got the opportunity to observe and help put at St. Gabriel’s Elementary School. The school just kept us in the same classrooms so I didn’t get to experience the environments of different classrooms but it did give for the chance to know the students and environment in the grade 1/2 classroom better. I got to learn about a different system of schooling as I had never experienced a school that packed in my student life ever. It had an aspect of chaos but was organized and the school had systems that made a day roll smoothly. They had separate teachers that would teach science and Phys ed classes and despite only being with the students for a short amount of time, a couple days a week, they knew the students and had built relationships with them in short increments of time. It shows the interconnectedness of a school as the teachers all worked together in their schedules to make a day flow smoothly and still build relationships with the students and other staff.

      I got to learn many valuable lessons both in class and in school. Throughout class I expanded my knowledge on indigenous culture and the importance of using traditional ways of learning and other inclusive learning tactics and why it’s important to make sure every student feels safe. The class with J also showed how making sure inclusive language and teaching in the classroom is important and makes for a safer learning environment. At St. Gabriel’s, I got to contribute and help the students out with things like spelling and showing them how to do assignments. In our classroom the teacher was more than happy and really encouraged that we help students and get teaching experience. We got to help set up the classes, run groups during a couple assignments and answer any questions the students had. This also showed the importance of building relationships with students to understand where they may be at in learning and helps to know what we as educators can do to help each student specifically and meet their needs.

       Throughout this experience I have learned that when you break that stereotypical stay at the front of the room teaching method and almost get rid of some of the typical western boundaries in a classroom and engage with students more it’s beneficial to everyone. The teacher in our class was almost never at her desk with students around and was often with the students while teaching, sometimes even sitting at empty desks amongst them. I noticed the students were all really engaged when she taught like this and created better discussions within the classroom. Something that surprised me that may not be relevant to the class but I had never seen in an elementary class was that they had microphones that would play into speakers in the roof of this class which helped for teachers to not have to yell and often helped keep a calm tone and not to have a need to raise their voices, just something I found interesting. As of this point in time I do not have many questions as many were answered and I learned a lot through this experience. Going forward I would like to learn more about how to go about teaching and how to prepare classes for students. I also could learn plenty more in inclusive teaching as I see this class as only the beginning of learning inclusive teaching methods and hope to learn more as I go on.

     It was great to read and compare experiences with you guys and good luck to your classes in the future.