Field Blog Posts

I feel as if my field blog posts showed a lot of growth for me and my learning so here is the example of my first blog post and my last.

First:

  • First thing in the morning the kids worked on grammar exercises by answering some questions, and fulling responding in full sentences. These  personal questions and helping them with their answers allowed my to get to know the children more, and there likes and dislikes. After they finish we corrected them, and the students shared their answers with the class, and they marked their own work. Then it was time for the students to work on their biography project, which they had been working on for a couple of weeks, and they were typing their essays out. I got to help them edit and properly format their essays, they wrote about their heros which also helped me to get the know them more. After recess it was math class and the class was starting a new unit of percents, decimals, and fractions. I observed Mr. Schlenker teach his math lesson and then we helped students with their assignment for the day. Some students struggled more than others to connect the percents, decimals, and fractions together, and it was interesting to see how different some students thought process is than others.

  • The learners in my placement are a 7/8 split classroom at Glen Elm School, and it is a community school. These students are very unique bunch of kids, and they are all at varying levels of education and learning abilities. The learning environment is a classroom, and the students are set up in in pods in desks. The walls are decorated with students past projects from this years students and students from years before. This classroom is very different from the from the ones in my school, we had no split classrooms, and our desks were always put in rows. This feels like a very safe space for kids and they all seem to enjoy school, and they all seem comfortable in the classroom.

  • I really enjoyed my fieldwork this week it was nice to get to know the kids, it was fun to be in the school and to be working with the kids. It was nice to be able to help them understand and learn, and it made me excited for the rest of my time at the school. It did make me nervous learning about some of the students and their pasts because I have never helped a student with violence issues before, like some of the students in my class. I feel like I am off to a pretty good start, all of them seem to like me, and they are pretty fun to be around.

 

Last:

  • Wednesday was different than most days because we didn’t have the classes as we normally do, which I enjoyed because I had only ever seen Mr. Schlenker teach ELA and Math, but today I also got to see him teach health. We started with ELA but we only did it for about 45 minutes, and the children worked on their last grammar lesson, and then on a project they had been working on. Then both 7/8 classes spilt and all the boys went to Mr. Scklenkler’s room and all the girls went to the other teachers room. They where working on s drugs unit, and it was different to see how the children really see drugs, some saw them as a problem and some do not. Other thought it was “okay” to drive high which it is not. After that it was an indoor recess do to all of the ice, so the children were in and out of the classroom, and then we moved on to Math. In math they had just moved on to a new unit, and the children were really understanding, which was nice because the last unit none of them really understood it. I helped three of the student who where really still struggling with the assignment, and for the fist time all of the student finished their assignments in the class, which was really nice to see on my last day.
  • I really enjoyed my times at Glen Elm it is a really great school, and everyone was really nice. I feel as if I learned a lot about different styles of teaching because it change from lesson to lesson with his teaching styles. Overall it was really good to get the experience of teaching, and being in that classroom environment, even though sometimes I dreaded going I always had usually I good expense once I got there. When I look at the big picture I think I was very lucky with the school I got they where all nice and it felt like a very safe environment.
  • I really enjoyed my last day and I was sad to know that I don’t get the chance to back again. The kids had extra energy today and I think it was because of the indoor recess, because it was so very icy outside, when I arrived there where kids sliding around outside trying to get to a door, and one of the buses was very late. I loved that I got to see health class on my last day because I had never seen that before and it was nice to see where the kids where at, when it came to drugs. Overall, it was a really great experience and I truly enjoyed the experience at sometimes it did make me question whether I really wanted to be a teacher, but in the end I just realized that I really do want to be a teacher.

These posts show how I grew and changed as I got to know the students and became more comfortable around them and they became more comfortable around me.

Content Growth and Learning

I feel as if I learned a lot in this course, about education and the system that helps all teacher function with a classroom. I took me a while to figure out how to taken in the amount of information because there was so much of it to begin with. My favourite chapter in the textbook was Chapter 5: The History of Education, because I am a person who loves history, and I also believe it is important to know where we come from to know where we are going.  I did struggle on the quizzes because there is so much information in the text, but it all very important to becoming a teacher. I also enjoyed the guest speakers in the class they all came with there own stories on how teaching really is in the real world. My favourite one was when there was when different teachers came into the classroom and they were all at different stages in there teaching careers, which showed the many angles of becoming a teacher and were you can go from here. This class became my favourite my the end of the semester because we got to learn and socialize at the same time, I truly believe I took in a lot of information from our classroom discussions.

Professional Growth

This semester I had the opportunity to actually go in and work at a school for one half day a week. I  loved my placement so much it was always a lot of fun, and I learned a lot about actual work that teachers are doing. This was my first experience in a school setting were I was one of the “teachers” or helpers instead of a student. It is defiantly a different dynamic then being an authority figure instead of a student, you have to worry about more than just yourself you worry about every single child in the classroom. My placement was at Glen Elm School in Regina, and it was really a great school to start at, and my co-operating teacher was really nice to work with. I learned the importance of networking with in the school system, and that the best resources you have are the teachers around you and you are not alone in the building full of teachers. I also learned about how important it is to be able to work with your peers and be able to teach lessens together.  I also learned that the way a student functions in a school is a lot different than the way a teacher functions.

Personal Growth

During my time in ECS 100, I have grown as a person, and learned a lot about my self and who I am as a person. I learned that it is very important to be on time and always be ready. It is my first semester of University, and I have grown as a person being on my own, and not depending on others for as much.  I learned that the path to becoming a teacher is not going to be as easy as I had previously thought, it is going to take lots of studying and relationship building to help me become the best teacher I can.  I also learned that my favourite part of working in a classroom is the one on one relationships with students,  getting to know them, and helping them understand the subject matter of the class. I have also made new friends in this class, that I hope can help me learn in the future, and become coworkers that can help each other in the future. I also learned how important it is the build relationships and with other peers and teachers so that you have resources not just online. I have learned my new ways to study and write, and improve open myself, because it really important to always be improving and becoming a better person. I feel I have grown a lot since the beginning of the semester and I have changed because fro the first time I start to struggle with school. By struggling more in university then I did in high school have learned more about myself and how I personally deal with struggling.  I have really enjoyed growing this semester and I have truly learned a lot.