Field Experience Blog

Wow! I can't believe field experience is already over! It feels like I was just starting it. What can I say about field experience?? Well tons of course!! First off I wasn't exactly sure how it was going to pan out, I mean I have observed in classrooms before, but I have never actually taught, except in our classes at UV, and that has never been full out or with students who aren't on my same level academically. I was kind of nervous, just because I didn't know exactly what to expect, but once we met our cooperating teacher I knew we would all get along! Our cooperating teacher was really great, she really helped us out on figuring out our lesson plans, like what could go where and such, and she supported what we were doing and gave great feed back.
When planning and teaching our lessons during field experience we incorporated 2 different art forms into our teaching, we had the class make masks, which is a visual art form as well as we had the students create a play that had to do with their specific character and mask, which incorporated drama. We tried to bring music into each of our lessons, whether it was being listened to during their work time or to give them an example of something. After our lessons were finished we asked the students what their favorite part of us teaching was and they all said either the plays or the masks! So that just justifies that bringing the art into the classroom makes learning 100 times more fun, helps to give the students something new and exciting, as well as helping them to focus on the work they were doing. I will definitely be using the arts in my future classroom.
I really love the kids in our class and am definitely going to miss them as well as our cooperating teacher that we worked with. It was a really great experience and opportunity this experience has helped me to really know that I do want to teach the lower grades and that I do really want to be a teacher. Its funny because going through school and with all of these classes that we are taking it kind of scares me, makes me second guess myself and wonder if I can really be a teacher. But with this field experience I know now know that I can be a teacher, and that one day I will be a great teacher!