So, for local immersion I am in a fourth grade classroom. When I got to the school, the teacher was no where to be found. She arrived 8 minutes after school had started and after all of the students were in the room. This was an extremely uncomfortable and awkward way to start my experience. I had no idea what we were to be doing and what my cooperating teacher expected me to do. It was most definitely a different start to my student teaching than the last school was. It causes me to wonder if it is because of the urban/rural, the diversity/no diversity, or the private/public difference that made it this way. I definitely felt less welcome at my local experience than I did my urban. So far I like urban better.
It is also weird that we are only there for the morning. I know that it makes things easier for our own class schedules, as we still are college students, but it makes it difficult to compare experiences for they are not the same experience. I don't mean that they are suppose to be the exact same experience. I mean they are different kids in a different environment, but the setup is not the same. In any experiment there is only one variable that is changed. In our urban to local experience there is way more than one variable being changed. This makes it extremely difficult to think about diversity. We do not see the kids for the same amount of time or during the same times of the day. This could have a difference on the behavior of the students that would be intriguing for us to take a look at.
As far as the actual kids go and the experience that I had while I was there, I don't know how much I like it. All of the students appear to have the same color of skin that I have. Most of them were welcoming to me. Well, not really. Now that I think about it, I would say maybe 1/3 or 1/4 were welcoming to me. Maybe it was because it was Valentine's Day and they were too busy with the excitement or maybe it is just the way they are. I wish we could have spent Valentine's Day at the urban schools. I miss the kids. I hope that as time goes on, my experience at the local school were give me at least as much passion and desire for teaching as the urban school did. I hope it tells me 'yes, I can teach anywhere', or 'Wow, I have a passion for urban/rural schools.' (I'm thinking more urban as of right now!) I do not believe that it will tell me to find a different career choice.
Tomorrow I will not be going because I have an appointment and Monday is President's Day so no one is going. I hope Tuesday is more organized and that I have a better experience. Next week is 'I love to read week,' so the teacher wants me to read one of my favorite stories from my childhood. But she doesn't want any supplementary activities: no talking in the middle, no questions at the end, the activity to go with it. This is weird to me since we are learning about how to do all of those things effectively in order to get students more involved IN reading and to like reading better. I don't really know what to expect. I guess we will just wait and see.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment