Beginning of Field Experience

So, I now have started my field experience.  I feel that this experience will do two things.  I twill help me get used to being in a classroom, and it will help me know what NOT to do.

The teacher does some things that my instincts that have been built through my Special Ed classes are screaming at me is wrong.

She tells us (there is another student who works with me) things in front of the students.  For instance, when we started the reading section, she told us three students needed the most attention in reading.  She had all three students raise their hands, and told us, "These three have the hardest time at reading."  I feel that that statement is like pointing out a big, fat gazelle to a starving lion on the Serengeti.

Another thing that really disturbed me was she threw away a student's assignment in front of his face.  I don't think that that is okay at all.  Richard Lavoie has a video where he says there is nothing a student can write or do that justifies throwing a students assignment away (he used the example of ripping the paper up).

In class, you emphasize 21st century teaching.  I stayed for a science class that the teacher gave.  She was teaching about the rock cycle.  She did not use any technology or visuals (besides the textbook) during her lecture.  I was talking with a friend about this, and we talked about how we could make it alive and interesting.  She just used a textbook, and showed pictures of rocks.

We thought that she could have brought in a rock.  Then smashed it with a hammer, at which point she adds dirt.  Then, she would show a video of a volcano erupting.

The final thing, because I feel as though I am complaining about her, is she told everyone that the worksheet she was passing out was really, really hard.  This is what I, and many others for that matter, call self-fulfilling prophecy.  She tells her students that this is really hard, and they are going to see and believe that it is hard.  I would, and may, use "pseudo self-fulfilling prophesy" where for easy things you say it is hard and hard things are easy.  At least, say that the easy stuff is hard.  This will give them confidence.

B ut I learned a few things myself.  One of the kids whom I helped on his worksheet was getting really distracted.  He started talking about Harry Potter because my glasses looked like Harry Potter's glasses (in that they are round).

I used a behavior modification on him.  So we were talking about Harry Potter and I said, "Tell you what, we'll keep talking about Harry Potter when you have answered 5 of these questions."  And he answered 5 questions and we talked about Harry Potter some more, I did this statement again and I unfortunately was called away to help another students.  So, that was, I feel, the only mistake that I made today.