TG
Integrative Studies
In my courses outside of NCC, my experience has fallen below what it has in my Integrative classes. An integrative approach has allowed me to explore topics in many different ways and open my eyes up to things I never would have in a lecture styled classroom. In my NCC classes I have been encouraged to not just accept things as true, but to explore them and understand why they are true. Being able to analyze what I am learning has helped me understand the basics of what I am taught and allowed it to stick with me through my college career.
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One wonderful aspect of the integrative approach is the ability and push to get hands-on experience. As a potential teacher I have felt my hands-on experiences through NCC has put me ahead of my peers who have not had the chance. During my internship at Brookfield Elementary I was able to set my own goals. This pushed me to set goals that I had not been able to meet in my other courses and I was able to learn more from my experience in the classroom than I had from my three years of other courses.
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The transition from childhood to adult can be a strange and difficult change for many children growing up. In my Prince Charming paper I two pieces of childhood literature and compare them to the changes we all go through as children. I was able to compare the experience of these classic stories to the lives of children today.
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To become a successful teacher I believe students studying to become one must not only understand and read the content, but also enter the classroom and use the skills they are being taught. In my Facilitating Literacy​ class I was able to do just this. I kept an observation journal to record what I had learned each day.
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Elementary Education
Since I was 7 years old I have wanted to become an Elementary School Teacher, but in Virginia you can not major in Education. As I knew I'd be teaching students in the main subjects: Math, Science, English, Social Studies, a degree in just one didn't seem to make sense.
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An Elementary teacher needs to be a jack-of-all-trades, thats where New Century College's Integrative Studies Degree with a Concentration in Elementary Education came into play. As a student who had done well in all four subjects and didn't have a preference of one over the other this major was the prefect match. I was taking classes that not only fulfilled my endorsement credits for Graduate School, but focused on topics which I would find myself teaching to Elementary School Students.
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In my Fairy Tales and Culture of Childhood class I was fulfilling an English credit, but was doing it in a topic I'd one day be able to use with my students. I looked deeper into the symbolism and ideas which different fairy tales give to their readers. For one assignment I took the short story of Rapunzel and analyzed how its message continued stereotypes of the female character to young audiences.
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One concept I have learned about and also been able to view is Professional Learning Communities, or PLCs. During PLCs teachers of the same grade or subject come together to work on the passing guide and how to tackle each subject. As a teacher it is easy to focus on your own classroom and not work with others since each teacher has their own classroom and their own classroom, but I have learned the importance of collaboration in the education profession.
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During my internship I was able to observe many PLCs. All the teachers from the fourth grade team came together to discuss where they were with their classes and the struggles each was facing. The teachers worked together to create lesson plans which were flexible to each of diverse learners they had in their classrooms. Not only did the plan together, but they also helped each other. They would rotate and take turns at different tasks. One week a teacher my be the person making all the paper copies for the entire grade and the next be the person who creates or looks for the Smartboard lesson to give an interactive component. The fourth grade team was great at volunteering and switching jobs making sure each was contributing in different ways each week.
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I found that collaboration lead to better teaching across the board. Each teacher had their own resources and ideas, but by coming together they were able to share them these ideas and come up with new lesson plans that one could not come up with on their own.
A technique I picked up in my Understanding the Sciences class was the teaching ability of foldables. For each of the four main topics we covered we were to create a foldable covering one of the subtopics we discussed in class. Each time we did this we all placed them on a desk and had a foldable expo where we all observed each others and gave them little paper awards for: most creative, simplest, best for 1st-2nd graders, and so on. We read through all of them and at the end discussed which ones we liked best and why. The best part of participating in these expositions was we always followed it up with a quiz on that subject. Having just read through everyone's foldables we had unknowingly been given additional study tools to help us and had become an expert in the subtopic we created our foldable in.
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One idea a professor shared with me in one of my education classes has stuck with me through my entire college career when it comes to classroom management: Equity over Equality. This idea means that we should handle each student to best help them. While we want all our students to feel equal that does not mean that we shouldn't give extra support to those students who need it. Each classroom is full of diverse learners. Some may need a lot of extra support while other could almost teach themselves. By living by Equity over Equality I am choosing to give extra resources and time to the students who need it. My Gifted and Talent students will not need much instruction from me so I will give them projects and activities which challenge them and do not require my full attention. With my students who are LD or have other disabilities I will work more one-on-one with them and target strategies to help each of them. With students there is no one size fits all. Each student should be pushed to achieve their best, but may need different paths or motivators to do so.
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During my time interning at Brookfield Elementary I became familiar with Positive Behavior Systems (PBS). This system took an approach which focused on the good students do rather than on the bad. The program was enacted throughout the entire school. If a student did an outstanding job or had excellent behavior they were given a red slip to write their name one. At the end of the week the principal came on the morning announcements and randomly pulled about twenty of the names that had been turned into her. She read them all aloud and congratulated the students on being caught being ready, responsible, and respectful. The students become excited hearing their names on the morning announcements and tried to get more slips in order to get their names read.
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The school also worked together to achieve high behavioral goals. Each classroom worked on its own to receive ten blue horseshoes from their specials teachers, substitute teachers, principal and vice principals. Once the class earned ten they were awarded one golden horseshoe. That golden horseshoe was then hung on a giant poster in the cafeteria for the entire school to see. The school had a goal of fifty, one-hundred, one-hundred and fifty, and two-hundred golden horseshoes. If that goal was met then the entire school received an award. After meeting the one-hundred and fifty goal I watched as the entire school had a giant picnic in the field. The lunch period lasted for an hour and students from all the grades and classes sat outside together and were allowed to play. This build a scene of community and responsibility among the students. They knew that they had to work together to receive these prizes and held one another accountable.
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