Our back-to-school "September Experience" officially came to a close on Friday and as I must now also get back to blogging, that experience seems an appropriate thing to blog about. I learned to put into practice so many things that we have been learning -- from backwards mapping a lesson (on latitude and longitude!) to building a classroom community from a group of 28 very diverse 4th and 5th graders.
Borrowing from my Intro to Field Experience Final Reflection . . . September Experience was amazing, exhausting, enlightening, frustrating, humbling and inspiring. I learned that 4th and 5th graders try to act older than they are but are really still kids at heart. I learned that with 28 kids in a classroom, everything takes a lot longer than you think it will. I learned that, more often than not, things do not go exactly as planned. I learned that even the toughest kids have a soft side and even the quietest kids have amazing things to say. I learned that what we say is often less important than how we say it. I learned that special needs kids are not a burden, but a gift. I learned how easy it is to inadvertently ignore the quiet, middle-of-the-road kids. I learned that there are an amazing array of teaching styles and that I need to learn to better appreciate and work with and learn from all of them. Most importantly, I learned that I cannot possibly learn all of the things that I want to learn in just one year of student teaching!
I wrote that reflection before my final day of September Experience when my cooperating teacher was out for planning meetings all day and I took control of the class (with a sub to assist, of course). In so doing, I learned a few additional things among which are that it takes a lot longer to plan a lesson than to teach a lesson and that managing transitions is going to be a vital skill to master!!
