My Final Thoughts
For my ECS 100 field experience, I was placed in a grade 4 classroom at École Wascana Plains school in Regina. This experience allowed me to observe both students and teachers in the school environment. As I stated after week one of my field placement, “The school reminded me of a modern high school and was not like any other elementary school I have been in. The school had lots of open space inside and most teachers kept their doors open as they taught. This allowed students that worked in different areas to come and go as needed”. I think that the set up of this school is important to share because it was so unique. The open space created a sense of comfort and welcoming for anyone that stepped foot in the building. The core questions provided to us students for each week genuinely helped me to notice different aspects of my school. Concepts like diversity, relationships, learning environments, and communities all were topics that allowed me to see how this one school is completely different from others. I especially felt connected to the school once I understood who my learners were. In week three, one of the questions was “What does the learning environment look like?”. This was a very significant question for me because of the way the teachers address the students in the classroom. In my week three blog post I explained “One thing that stood out to me is the fact that the teachers refrain from using words like classmates or students. Instead they say friends. This makes the environment more comfortable, especially when a teacher says “can we have three friends come to the front of the class?” instead of using the word “students”. I have never seen teachers call the students anything other than “classmates” or “students”. When majority of the teachers used the word “friend”, it immediately caught my attention because I saw how something as simple as one word could make a whole room feel connected to each other.
I felt that the field placement and core questions were remarkably related to each lecture, seminar, and assignment. This experience clearly affects my process of becoming a teacher in a positive way. The fact that everything was connected in some way, allowed me to conceive new perspectives and understandings. This has motivated me to be more open-minded throughout the rest of my journey, in order to be as perceptive as I can at the end. Each student in that grade 4 classroom made an impact on my decision to become a future teacher. One student specifically came to me on my second last week in the field and he told me that teaching is the job for me. This made excited to make an impact on more students in the future. It is unfortunate that my time at Wascana Plains had to come to an end a few weeks early, but I immensely appreciate having the chance to observe and experience teaching, as well as the opportunity to form relationships with these amazing students and teachers!
Week Four Blog Post
Week four in the field was one of my favourite weeks because I thought it really demonstrated inclusiveness; therefore, I thought it was important for me to share!
Week Four
This week was extremely different from the past weeks. The students are taught about gardening and planting through the use of a tower garden. The students harvested the dill they had been growing and by the time I arrived at the school, the dill had already been in the oven for a few hours and was dried out. The plan was to make dill popcorn from the dill the students harvested. Our teacher got my partner and I set up in the kitchen with a popcorn machine and our job for the next hour was to make popcorn.
After we cleaned up, I walked around and assisted students in their work that they were catching up on. Once recess was over and the popcorn mixture was made, we joined another classroom that has been working along the side of them. The classroom was overflowing with students munching on popcorn and listening to the teacher read a book. It was definitely a fun and different experience!
This activity we did with the popcorn demonstrated hands on learning and inclusion very well. Team teaching was a significant component of this week. As my class joined another class, I was able to see how the students would interact with each other and how having two teachers in the room would alter things. It was definitely a lot of work for four of us to prepare this activity and get organized, so I could not imagine how it would have gone if we would not have teamed up with another teacher and classroom.