Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Brigham Reflection #2



Last week I was able to assist Laura and Allie on their preschool lesson. Their focus was on the sense of smell. I really enjoyed the activity that they come up with. They made two sets of bottles and had the students’ record if they liked the smell or didn’t like it. Since they are so young and very early developing readers they had a very simple sheet that had smiley faces on it. I felt this was also helpful for the students that are bilingual. They started with a book and then did the exploration activity that allowed the students to actually try out and use their sense of smell. I loved the idea of having them smell something in a bottle without seeing it, but I was concerned that the students would dump the bottles and a few did. With that age it’s hard to make an activity that they can smell without having the physical object. 

My goal is really made up of three smaller goals. I feel that it might be a good idea if I focus on one goal a week. For this week I decided I would focus on to gaining experience in working with and accommodating for diverse students. Whether we know it or not we will mostly likely always end up working with student who are diverse. That’s just the nature of teaching. It would be very boring if we had 25 of the same kid. Students from a young age should see us supportive of all of our students. Based on my background and where I grew up, I don’t feel that I had much exposure to other students who were different than me. Some might call it white privilege. But I don’t think I was using my race to get my things. Did I have access to more things because I am white? That’s up for debate. My parents have done a very good job of providing me with the tools I need to become a teacher. Do I realize that all parents aren’t like mine? Absolutely. I feel that in my clinical site I have had a few times were I find myself wondering why a student doesn’t understand something. I’ve come to realize that this is sometimes a result of their culture. I need to learn that all students might not celebrate Halloween and might need help brainstorming words if that’s an activity I’ve planned. This is just one of many examples that comes to mind, but overall I realize that I have a lot to learn. 

We were able to get some basic instructions form Laura and Allie on what they wanted us to do and how to help the students. I think it cool that we get to be aids in our peers lesson because in the future we might be in a situation where we have a co teacher with us. It can be hard to fall into that position and it definitely depends on the two teachers and their styles of teaching. One teacher might prefer to plan while the other prefers to lead the whole class. It would be helpful to sit down with the co teacher and plan out what are the expectations of each party involved. If you are not both on the same page, how are you going to lead a classroom together? I would say that I see this come into play a lot in my PDS site. My CT from day one gave me many opportunities to work with the students and earn his trust and respect. I would not say we are co teachers because it is mainly his classroom, especially when I am not there. He does include me in many classrooms decisions which shows me that he trusts me with the students. I feel that trust is earned and I work to show him that I can handle certain responsibilities. 

EXCEEDS: I plan to respond to two classmates, I have 655 instead of the required 500 and included experiences from PDS. 

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