Schwendeman 1
Abby Schwendeman
Professor Eastman
Introduction to Early Childhood
May 6, 2009
Field Experience Reflection
Completing over twelve field experience hours at the preschool level has provided more benefits than I anticipated. I enjoyed my time at Presby Preschool, in Warsaw, with Mrs. Christine Turskey more than I had ever imagined. I also learned great strategies and planning techniques that I can implement in my own classroom, even if I do not teach at the pre-kindergarten level. While I plan on teaching at an elementary level in a special needs classroom, I still feel that I have grown as a teacher candidate by participating in this field experience. Many of the ideas that I have taken with me from the preschool classroom setting will work at any grade level and will help make my classroom more organized and fun.
A very important concept that this field experience helped me expand upon is classroom management. Not only does discipline matter, but the classroom environment alsomakes a large impact on how the class functions. Mrs. Turskey had a very organized classroom and there was a distinct routine which helped the students to know what to expect. Her daily activities flowed well in the environment, and each day was started and finished in “circle time.” Students did calendar time and story time when they were sitting in a circle in the pre-designated area of the classroom at the beginning of the day. At the conclusion of the day, students joined in during songs and interactive stories while in “circle time” and then were dismissed from the circle (by the color of the mat they were sitting on) to go and get their coats and backpacks and line up at the door. Every day was orderly and predictable.
I also learned a lot about the value of assessment. It is imperative that teacher candidates realize that not all assessments have to be formal. While there are no set formal assessments in the classroom, Mrs. Turskey and her aides often use checklists to keep track of a student’s progress. The students are observed doing various activities and get a satisfactory check-mark if they correctly complete the task. Notes are also taken when a student struggles with a certain activity. This field experience has helped me to realize that while the students can learn in fun and creative ways, the teacher can simply observe and record the results of their lessons. For instance, my cooperating teacher also had a checklist for who had good scissors and glue skills-- which fit with the fine motor skills foundations for young children. She just observed it during craft time and the students had no idea that they were being “assessed.” This informal method of assessing will be essential for me in my future special education classroom, because special needs children do not usually test well and I will need to discover other ways to mark and observe their progress.
Another important concept that Mrs. Turskey and her aides taught me was to relax and have fun with your lessons. If you’re not willing to sing crazy songs and dance, chances are your students will not be willing to either. Reading stories in voices is also a great way to keep the children engaged in lessons. Mrs. Turskey is a family friend, yet I had never seen her be so “goofy.” She was a completely different person with the children and they absolutely loved her for it. The children reacted so well to her energetic attitude. I think that this field experience will help me to relax and have more fun with my lessons. I am starting to realize that I shouldn’t worry about impressing adults, because at the end of the day, it is the children that matter.
By far, the most important concept that I have learned from this field experience was that when working with children, not everything goes as planned! When planning my lesson, I was very organized and had wonderful ideas about what I could do with the concept of mixing colors. I had chosen two students, both with special needs, to complete my lesson with me. I used quart-sized Ziplocs® and shaving cream with food coloring to show the concept of mixing colors. The plan was that children could put the shaving cream in the bag, pick two primary colors of food coloring, and mix them together to see what the result was. It did not go quite as planned. One child refused to leave the classroom to work in the hallway with me. The other was very enthusiastic but also very distracted. He also is labeled as “developmentally delayed” and did not know all his colors, so this lesson was more difficult to complete with him. He was unable to use the food coloring himself because of some motor skill delays and I was constantly having to stop him from opening the bags and sticking his hands in the shaving cream. While the lesson did not go as smoothly as I had hoped, I do feel that he still retained some of the knowledge from the lesson and I know that he had a lot of fun doing the activity.
Though I do not plan on changing my career to be an early childhood teacher (if anything, this field experience has reinforced my decision to be a special education teacher), I do feel that this field experience has provided remarkable insights. Working with wither special needs children or very young children is a similar process. One has to invent ways to engage the children in lessons and find a way to relate every lesson to each child individually. Mrs. Turskey did a wonderful job captivating students and I feel that I have learned a lot about managing a classroom as well as planning lessons through this field experience.