2016-2017: Year in review
The past year has definitely been an exciting one, presenting new opportunities and challenges. After switching my major from nursing to secondary education just over two years ago, I was able to have my first real experiences inside a classroom this past year, outside of solely observations. This presented many different challenges and new experiences. There were simple ones, like getting up on time to be at the placement before school starts and dressing up professionally on days I was in my placement. There were also more challenging ones, like learning how to lesson plan and how to deliver content to best serve the student populations that were in the class. The two biggest challenges from me resulted from totally new experiences. I have never been immersed in a student culture and population like the one at my placement this past spring..Coming from my own culture and background, where a large majority of people around me were just like me, it was a totally new experience being surrounded by such a diverse student and faculty population. This challenged me to be able to find ways to relate and communicate with my mentor and the students so as to earn their trust and respect, which would be important in building that student-teacher relationship which is crucial to student learning.I was able to build that trust with the students by finding mutual interests in both sports and music, and talking to the students during and outside of class time about music, their favorite sports teams, as well as the sports they played. This communication was key in showing the students that I cared about them and was there to help them succeed. Also, the school I was placed at uses a totally different teaching style than what I had been used to in both my own high school courses as well as college courses, and this was a huge difference that took some getting used to. My placement last spring used Project Based Learning as a way to deliver instruction. With PBL, there is very little direct instruction, with all content being delivered towards the end goal of completing a project that relates content standards to real-world experiences, usually culminating in a presentation of some sort. This was very different from my own learning experience, which was almost exclusively direct instruction. Because of this, I was challenged to change my mindset from teaching the students in a way I found it easy to learn to a way that fit their PBL style. Not only was this a challenge for me, but it was also a challenge for my university supervisor, who oversaw my placement and ensured I was meeting program requirements. She was also unfamiliar with how PBL worked as a learning style, and together we struggled through working out how to complete program objectives while teaching the students in the style they were accustomed to. I am very grateful to my program supervisor and my mentor for working with me to help me grow and complete my first placement experience this past spring. Ultimately, I was able to use what I had learned in my courses, along with advice from my mentor and placement seminar instructor to find ways to deliver content which hopefully allowed the students to learn and grow. I look forward to this challenge, as well as new challenges that will come with my student-teaching full year placement this upcoming year.