Nothing is ever perfect: A Fieldwork Reflection

    Teaching is a tricky thing. Sometimes you can think you are prepared when in reality you should have practiced about 20 more times. Lately, I learned a lot in my fieldwork experience in the 5th grade class at Bishop Dunn Memorial School.

    When my group taught our lesson on Christopher Columbus and the New World, we were the first group to go and we were confident about our lesson. We thought we were confident. As soon as we stepped in front of the class, we realized, or at least I realized how intimidating it is to step in front of a classroom with all eyes on you and you are responsible for shaping their minds and helping them learn. There are steps you must follow.

Step 1: Planning

    Sometimes planning can be very easy or very hard. If you have an idea and know exactly how you want the lesson to go, it can be an easy process. If you have no idea and all you know is the topic you want to teach on, it can be very difficult to come up with engaging, creative, stimulating, and interesting activities in include in your lessons in order to develop a deeper sense of understanding. 

Step 2: Teaching

    The teaching process is a tricky thing, like I said. Planning is an important aspect, but you can never know how that planning will relate in the classroom before you get there. It is important to know your students. We were absolutely at a disadvantage going into the classroom to teach a lesson because we had no prior knowledge about the certain group of students. When teaching, you can find out what works for certain students and what may not work for others.Our group had an idea of what we wanted to do, however we did not know how it would convey to the 5th grade students. The following groups could observe and see what methods seemed to work best for this specific group of students and therefore plan their lessons and activities accordingly. We did not have that opportunity. We were the first to go and I really highlight that because anytime you are the first, you are the rough draft. Before knowing the students, and before observing how you can alter the lesson to include technology and other types of activities, you can not be completely accurate.  You need to find a balance like a balanced scale. In one end you have how you are teaching and on the other end you have how students learn best. It is very important to find this balance because students learn differently. In this specific group, I realized that when students worked in a group, students didn't work as well because there was a lot of disagreement and fighting. Especially during the review Jeopardy game that we presented, students argued over point values and whether answers were correct of not.  It is important to also adapt to all situations. Life can throw so many things your way at all different times and you must be able to have at least 3 backup ideas at every moment. For example, the morning that I was scheduled to present my topic I found out that I did the wrong set of work and therefore was not prepared to teach anything. As my backup, I latched onto my fellow group member's part of the lesson and I worked with her to teach her section of the topic. Overall, this experience strengthened my love for teaching. Ever since I was little, I wanted to be a teacher. That "got it" moment is what continues to strengthen my love for this career. 

Step 3: Students

    Like I said before, you MUST know your students and what works best in correlation to their learning styles. From this experience, I learned that some students loved learning and would constant ask and answer questions when other students were not interested at all and would, in turn, daydream or focus on other things. I also learned that some students like to take the lead, especially in group activities. Every time we had the students work in groups, one young lady would take charge and become very bossy. From that, if this was my classroom I may have had to work with a separate group of students or I would focus longer on what a team is or what "TEAM" may stand for. It is so important for students to work well in groups because it creates good social skills, communication skills, and an overall better way of learning. Mostly, the students of the 5th grade class seemed to enjoy hands-on activities. After a while of lecturing, students can get bored and start not paying attention. If you create an engaging and interesting assignment or even an engaging lesson, students are more likely to retain information and understand a topic better.

Step 4: Team Teaching

  I love team teaching. Team teaching is a great for emerging teachers. In the field, teachers are always relying on others such as principals, other teachers, or specialists in order to gain insight. Therefore, it is very important for teachers to be able to reach out to others and communicate accordingly. In my group, we all helped each other evolve our ideas and we each become responsible for our own work. Like I explained, sometimes things don't always go as planned and you must be able to realize your mistakes and move forward from them and also learn from them. By having more than one teacher in the classroom it allows for students to connect with different personalities. In another group, one teacher candidate was very enthusiastic and was very active throughout the room, I noticed that more students in the classroom seemed to respond more to this type of teacher rather than other teacher candidates who stood in the front of the room and solely talked about the information.