Reflection on First Practicum

This semester provided me with my first student practicum experience.  Me and one other girl in my ArtEd208 class - Lindsey - were partners over at a middle/high school about an hour away.  The first day I was there, I felt pretty unsure.  I didn't know anything about the teacher we were partnering with, but thankfully I knew the school from music and sporting events.  That provided me some comfort.

When I met my cooperating teacher, my initial reaction was dread.  He reminded me of my old band teacher - quiet, little awkward, but somehow having immediate respect from his students.  There wasn't a lot of obvious positivity/pleasantness when I met him, and I worried that would make me uncomfortable and feel inadequate.  Luckily enough, Mr. B kind of address it by himself.  He called himself not a Type-A personality and isn't going to be smiling and outgoing all day every day.  But I shouldn't take any offense.  This was one of my biggest "problems" that I ran into my practicum because my biggest fear was that my cooperating teacher and I would not get along.  Not the case at all.  Despite us having completely different personalities, I felt I could talk to him and go to him for advice and be met with reciprocated respect.

The rest of the experience was also incredibly eye-opening.  I taught a week long lesson with Lindsey, and I had many valuable lessons from it.  The first day, we had struggled with time and gave our students a little too much in some areas, and so they got a little squirrel-y.  That was eye-opening that even when we plan activities out for certain amounts of time, sometimes students don't need as much time as we give them.

My third lesson I learned was about the connections with the students.  How I learned this was from a mistake on my part.  I didn't know all the names of the students, instead, I was participating in a "no-hands" calling on method and picking three or four names to specifically call on students and in the process, know their names.  I had read the seating chart wrong one day, and thought one of my students was called *Brian.  His name, in fact, was *Brice.  Easy mistake because of chicken scrawl.  I was calling on students by their name, and then he raised his hand.  I hadn't known the name, so I said, "Yes, you."

The next day, he totally called me on it before the start of class.  We had a good laugh, and I proceeded to call him *Brian.  I thought I was burning down bridges with this student because of my continuous errors, but he turned out to be a very enthusiastic student who both respected and enjoyed cracking jokes with me.  I got to know all the students on some more personal levels.  Such as, I could tell that *Alicia was a perfectionist and did not do well under time constraints.  *John was a stubborn student and did not like being told how to do something, so you'd need to phrase your suggestions in ways that led him to the conclusion by himself.  *Lily was a quieter student, but showed that she has a deeper understander of people through her paragraph describing why she chose the person she did for the portrait.

The last day of my teaching, I felt a mixture of pride and sadness.  Pride because I had succeed at my first long term teaching moment, and sadness because I felt responsible for these children and knew that I'd probably never see them again.

The entire practicum experience taught me many things.  Not only did it prepare me for edTPA and the video recording (what I had was absolute garbage), but I learned so much in regards to student interaction with classroom related and not classroom related subjects.  I also observed many interesting moments and instructional skills from Mr. B that I want to carry with me in my own classroom some day.  I love his idea of giving each student an art kit that they are responsible for the entire year and need to replace anything that goes missing.  I love how he creates his seating charts - allowing students to write two people they'd like to sit by and one person they'd not like to sit by on a card that only he sees.  I appreciated how he goes above and beyond with students he might not even have in his class to work with their parents and get these students back on track.  This first experience was wonderful, and it truly reinforced my wanting to become an art teacher.  Yes, there were hard times, but each of these hard times help me grow to become the amazing art teacher that I want to be.

Questions (6-10)

We are so close to the end of this semester, a semester that taught me more than I thought possible.  And with the end coming to a close, that means there is a whole bunch of last minute things to be done that weren't taken care of in the beginning, haha.

I will finally answer the rest of the assigned reflective questions in regards to my student practicum experience.

Question 6: "Are there rules posted?  What are they?"

At the beginning of the experience, Mr. B didn't actually have the rules posted.  That was something my co-teacher, Lindsey brought to his attention.  It was almost like he had a, "d'oh" moment with how helpful having the rules in visible spots for the students would be.  About halfway through, he got them posted on the backs of their cubbies that face the student work section.  These rules talk about classroom etiquette such as picking up after oneself and not wasting materials, but it also described their discipline policy that is school-wide and has just been put into affect in the last year.

Question 7: "How does the teacher address safety issues?"

During our time with Mr. B, we never got to see him address safety issues in the class, so I asked him how he goes about doing such.  He stated that whenever they start a new project, and there is possible safety concerns, he goes over with the students how to properly handle the equipment.  Sometimes, the equipment cannot be handled by the students so he explains the reasons why.  His number one thing is to always explain "why" about new situations or with questions.  And then, if students break the safety rules the discipline plan is put into action.

Question 8: "How does the teacher handle: bathroom breaks/locker/drinks? Radio/Ipods? Telephone? Use of materials? Borrowing materials overnight? Cleaning up?

Mr. B teaches middle school and up, so the first day he has them in sixth grade he gives them the, "You're almost all adults," talk.  Through this, the students are given the power to go the bathroom without needing to ask.  The only way they can do such though, is if the bathroom pass is in the classroom (aka not being used).  When they leave, they are expected to take no longer than 5 minutes, and if they constantly abuse that rule, the privilege of bathroom breaks is taken away.

Students are allowed music in the classroom if they have earbuds and are not doing any extra stuff such as social media and games on their phone/ipod.  There is also conditions such as them getting their homework done, misbehaving, etc.  They also need to have a B or better in the class to have access to that privilege.  Mr. B does play music over his speakers during work time which all the students seem to enjoy.

Borrowing materials overnight is not an issue because at the beginning of the semester they are given an art kit with all the supplies they will need for that class.  Items are accounted for when the kit is checked out to them, and if the items aren't there at the end of the semester/quarter, they student pays the teacher the replacement cost.  That isn't an empty consequence either.  He had students who did not receive their diploma because of replacement costs they accumulated throughout their art years.

With cleaning up, it is the expectation that they are all adults and he is not their parents.  Students lose privileges such as music if they do not clean up after themselves.  They may also lose points - when the class has gained 10 points through review questions asked they get to come to class and get straight to work.  If they lose points, they have to go back to reviewing questions.

Question 9: "Does the teacher use a lesson plan, curriculum map, or a calendar to plan units?  Does he/she have a written curriculum?  What does the plan include?"

The teacher uses lesson plans, but does not have a curriculum map.  He has something a little different which is a book of all the lessons the previous art teacher taught, along with all the art lessons he has ever taught and project examples with each one.  He has done A LOT.  I think it was really cool to see all the options he has created along with how he constantly looks to revamp the art program and not give the same old same old every year.  We did express that it would be beneficial to create the lessons around multiculturalism and art history more, and that was something he stated he is looking into developing more.

Question 10: Ask students questions.

Lindsey and I got to know the students throughout the weeks.  At the end of our lesson, I felt very much like when I had to leave the children I babysat for four years.  I made connections with them, and now I will probably never see them again.  Throughout the lesson, the children expressed that they really liked how they were able to do the portrait on someone they admired.  We got to see why they chose the person they did through the paragraphs they wrote, and it was really interesting to see the not as shallow reasons that (I may) have expected.  Other projects they had done was a clay house that got really detailed!  I was a little intimidated by them in the beginning that I probably didn't get to know them as well as I could have, but come the week of us teaching I was able to see more of them and their talents from my direct working with them.  I saw that the IEP student was very talented with painting and had a good eye when it came to picking out the different values.  I saw the almost alarming levels of anxiety one student dealt with in regards to deadlines and wanting things to be perfect.  And I saw another student that I would have pegged as a meat-head jock, do some beautiful stippling with his painting.

Work Now, Work Later

So my practicum experience has been a bit of a slow starter.  My cooperating teacher's kids have been sick the last week, and so he wasn't able to make it in to school.  Because of such, I missed out on two days - or six hours - of my experience.  Little disappointing and now there are some other factors I'm worried about.

Those factors.  Well, I mean, it's not too many.  It's more factors that are concerning me about how I'm going to make my hours for ARTED208.  The full-time manager at my store is going to be putting in her resignation next week.  This lady is amazing as a co-worker and as a friend, and I'm going to miss her dearly.  Where my stress comes in is that she and I had it figured out - my schedule - for my practicum experience all in advance so I wouldn't need to worry about what days I'd have off from work; I'd have it all planned out.

Well, since she's leaving now, and before my hours are filled, I'm concerned my Regional Manager is not going to be able to respect the days I needed, and instead tell me that as the part-time manager, I need to suck it up and take my "manager responsibility" and fill in Michelle's position.  

I'm ready for a talk with her though.  This class is the priority, not work.  That's a little hard for me because work IS how I pay for everything while I'm here at college.  I have an apartment I have to pay for, insurance that needs coverage, WiFi to attend to so I can do homework not on campus, and so while this current job is important, ultimately my FUTURE job is important.  The job where I'm going to be impacting children's lives till I'm sixty or even seventy.  (Yes, that would be so cool to teach art that long).

This will be difficult.  Heck yes, on so many levels.  But, I guess if an agreement cannot be found, I'll need to perhaps leave a current job that I enjoy over any of my past jobs, for the opportunity to make sure I'm 100% prepared for my future job.