I have posted a lot of things on this blog, most having to do with EDU classes I have taken and relating these assignments to my understanding of what an educator looks like. Yet I have not written much on actual experience I have had inside the classroom, this mostly due to how my program is set up and when I actually do step into the classroom. This past quarter has given me that opportunity. Talking about hypothetical and philosophical ideas is all well and good, but being able to incorporate some of these ideas inside of a classroom is whole different ball game so to speak. So here is a little self-reflection on my experience so far in a Latin classroom.
I am at a large public high school in Seattle, where I have a lot of diversity in regards to ethnicity, ELLs, learning ranges and specifically language experience. I work with a seasoned Latin teacher who is very helpful and takes the role of mentor teacher seriously. My first days in the classroom were nerve-racking and exciting. With the sort of program I am in, undergrad, I only am in the classroom once a week. So I took longer to learn my students names, and these were only a third of my mentor teachers students, he teaches levels 1-AP, and made it more difficult for me build individual relationships with the students. Yet I have come to recognize a number of students by different facets of their persons. I had not realized how different my first understanding of what the classroom is like to how it really is. And for those of you out there who are teachers pardon my naïveté for what a high classroom looks like, please comment with anecdotes and advice, it would be much appreciated. I mean I went to a traditional public high school as well as a private one, both very different environments, yet these experiences were form the students perspective, not an educators. I also had not realized how important parents are to my classroom and to the learning environment of my students. For you parents out there with current or past high school students I would love to hear anecdotes and wishes from you as well.
What I want to say in reflection to these last 10+ weeks is that I realized that I knew absolutely nothing about the classroom but I also have learned a lot through my recent training. Classroom management is key aspect in the classroom. This is something that gets covered in some programs, mine included, yet I had not realized how essential and relevant such a topic would be to the classroom. I figured, go over rules and regulations in the first couple weeks, set up some routines and we’re good. Ya…no. Classroom management is still a current aspect of the classroom that I and my mentor teacher are still engaging in with our students, well past those first couple weeks, and I am going take a guess and say it something that I will still be working on well into the school year. Those little routines that help a class run smoothly, how you pass paper around the class, when should you be coming in for quiz re-takes and tutoring, where extra handouts are kept, using the course log; all of these little things really set the tone for the class and the year. This is something I did not give due credit to. I feel my program does an excellent job in bringing this concept forward and opening dialogue about but I still feel ill-prepared for my first year of teaching. I will definitely be supplementing this with videos and senior teacher advice (please comment) on how to to start those first few days at the beginning of the year to help set the tone for the rest of the year.
Aside from the classroom management aspect I have also been further encouraged by my experience of how much I want to be a teacher and how this job further excites me. I look forward to my first year and I hope I have the same feeling in 10 years. I have read the statistics about the number of teachers who quit or retire well before making a life long career out of it. I don’t want to end up there. Looking at my experience so far I don’t feel it will be a problem, but I have barely scratched the surface. I have seen that light bulb moment, that moment that every teacher is holding out for, I have also seen the slow decline of enthusiasm and interest, the slow death of a students interest and grade. Yet I see both of these instances as learning opportunities and ways to be another perspective for these students to see from. These two very different students have forced me come up with new ways to present material, to diversify the content and how it is presented, as well as to get to know the student on a personal level. I definitely struggle with doing this and have not necessarily fixed anything completely by I have made that step and hope to finish through.
So this post is just a brief idea as to where I am at currently in my program and what I have experienced so far in the classroom. Thank you to my program professors and mentor teachers, to my past teachers and to you.
image:http://www.dl.ket.org/latin1/review/classroom/class.htm
Ms. Smith 