Artifact 6.3

Ashleigh L’Heureux

February 5, 2005

EDU 316

Reflective Journal #1

PART I

            So far my time at my The Holmes Elementary School has been both interesting and eye opening. I am for the first time seeing what it is like in an integrated classroom. It is not what I expected, and often times I find myself questioning the motives and methods of my supervising practitioner. She does not treat the children with special needs in a way that fosters their development and learning. More often than not, she insults them and laughs at them in front of the class to the point where they look like they are going to cry. Right now, I see myself as a patient person and am willing to give these students as much attention as they need, recognizing that being fair does not always mean being equal and some students need more attention than others. One of my fears is that the longer I am a teacher the less tolerance I will have for students like these the way that supervising practitioner no longer does. It makes me wonder what has happened to cause her to treat the children in such a negative way. She never waits for them to complete tasks and yells and says things to them like, “I bet you didn’t study for today’s social studies test” or “you’re sick in the head”. When I hear her say these things it makes me feel so sad, and I notice myself being drawn toward these children because I want them to know that someone cares about them and their education.

One dilemma that I am confronting is how to teach without telling. After talking with supervising practitioner we have decided that each day that I am in the classroom I will teach a 45-minute geography lesson to the whole class. They did not learn about North American geography in the fourth grade and they will be tested on it when they take the MCAS so my teacher though it would be beneficial to teach them this information. However, after reading all the material about teaching throughout my time here at Wheelock I have learned that learning should be discovered and that we should pull knowledge from children and not put it into them. I finding that difficult to do with this unit because I see geography as so cut and dry that I am having a hard time to create a lesson in which the students discover where cities and rivers and mountain ranges are for themselves. I am still in the process of thinking this over and discussing it with my teacher.

What seems to be absent from my experience is hands-on interactive learning. The students are always reading from textbooks and completing worksheets and displaying what they know through paper and pencil tests. I wish that I got to see more student led exploration and discovery of topics being learned because that is what I feel that my reading has been teaching me. One of the biggest things that I have gained from the reading is to know who your students are and to cater your curriculum to their personalities, cultures, and learning styles. It is not evident to me the ways in which my supervising practitioner has done this, however, this is something I plan to ask her about.