Pre-Internship Experiance

This semester has felt like the semester where I have learned most and been the most involved in. My pre-internship class has been highly educational for me to assist with my educational journey. I felt uncomfortable with teaching virtually until I was able to try it during this class. This course has offered me endless experiences that I will take forward with me throughout the future. I truly have enjoyed this semester with you, Donna!

The pod breakout rooms during our zoom meetings helped me grow as an educator, and as a student as I got to receive feedback from others on things I could improve in my lesson plan, with myself, or with the way I teach. This has been helpful as I was able to learn various techniques through many topics such as classroom behaviour management and teaching through different instruction (example; art-infused). Breaking out into pods has also helped me discover new ideas and resources to use in my future classroom for a lesson, or for the students to use themselves. Jackie had done a lesson based on the book Good Egg by Jory John and Pete Oswald and I had asked her for the title of the book as I have heard some of my before and after school students speak about some of the books within this series like the Bad Seed. I am thankful to have been put in a breakout group with Jackie and Olga as they were both helpful for offering recommendations, participating in my lessons and being very open when having discussions. I feel as if I have learned most from this breakout group than other breakout groups in different classes this semester. I also enjoyed the 2 stars and 1 wish message we had to send before lessons. This assisted me with further preparing my lesson before teaching it so that it ran more smoothly. I often found myself using the suggestions given and incorporating them into my lessons. This activity made it feel like “nice feedback” rather than to be hit with a brick with everything you did wrong with no positivity. I plan to use this activity as reflections and feedback for my future students as I felt this was the best feedback activity introduced to me yet. 

One key thing that stuck with me this semester was when you had talked to the class about how we refer to our students. With my experiences throughout my education in primary school, as well as post-secondary, many of my educators have referred to the class as “you guys” or “guys”, which I realized I also did after we discussed it. Since then I have been watching my words closely when communicating with my before and after school students. I started saying our program name or “my friends”, which has been working perfectly. As a human, learning is done daily throughout nearly everything you do. It is important to learn from your mistakes, as well as build onto your previous knowledge with new findings to strengthen yourself. I used to feel guilty when making mistakes and took offence when being criticized due to having the belief of mistakes being bad, but I have always tried to improve. I now see mistakes as being another learning opportunity and a place for improvement for myself, not only to benefit myself but to also benefit others. Professor Malinda Strueby often states in class that a “mentally safe environment is just as important as a physically safe one”, which a mentally safe environment is where I often feel learning about. Another key learning I had during the duration of this course is that virtual learning can be virtual but feel like it is in-person. This can be done and was shown by Jackie, by an educator going to the place of reference. Jackie went to a park that we were talking about in Moose Jaw during one of her lessons. I was able to educate my lessons through google docs by creating PowerPoint slides where students could move objects on their screen and role play with them afterwards if they would like. Learning virtually is still new to many, including myself as my entire education has been based primarily on being in-person until the pandemic had started to occur. As stated before, I have been able to find various resources and ideas to take with me as a future teacher.