In the classroom

Erin Christina Elliott


May 1, 2010

April 23- April 30

Journal

These first few days of going to the elementary school and interacting with the students have been a wonderful experience. The first two days was just observing and seeing how the class is run. Mrs. Cranmer would come and talk to us during the student’s recesses time and ask us if we had questions or explain a few different things about her classroom and how things are done. One thing I learned from her kind of goes against what we are taught in our classes here at school. All my teachers stress lesson plans and how important they are and tell us that we will be making them for everything for the rest of our lives, but my cooperating teacher told us that we won’t. We, as teachers, will be making some lesson plans, but if we make a lesson plan for every lesson that we are going to teach then we will be spending all our time making lesson plans. She told us that some lessons we will make a lesson plan for and some we will just teach.

A teacher needs to be in control of their class. Every teacher has their own way of running their classroom and it is important to make sure the class knows those rules. Mrs. Cranmer runs her class under a schedule and the class knows the rules of the class. This last Friday she actually changed up the routine and the class didn’t know what to think of it. I have learned that watching the teacher teach and actually be up and helping in the classroom are two different things. These students are learning differently then I learned. I am sitting in the back of the class observing the students learning and learning phonics myself. I am very thankful for my literacy class to help me understand these things that the students are learning and the things that I know I will be helping teach the students, though I am pretty sure they will be teaching me more then I them.

These students are in such a great learning environment and I can tell that they do learn and for the most part enjoy learning. The teachers know their students and how each student learns and creates the learning environment that best fits the class’s needs. Mrs. Cranmer always asks us if there are any questions that we have that need to be answered and even when we don’t have any questions she gives us information about what the class is doing and why they are doing it. I have started picking up on the cues that she gives to the class and how in control she is of the tone of her voice and words she uses even when the class or single students get in trouble. After observing for a week I am excited to start teaching, but on the nervous side too. I am working on that because I know that I cannot let the students know that I am intimidated or anything about teaching them, or I know that they will try to walk all over me.