Out of all the course I have taken so far, I can honestly say that my Level 1 Internship really made the most impact on me. I did not have a positive experience with my supervising teacher and she did not allow me to do anything in the classroom. At first I thought that nothing positive could come out of my experience with my teacher and class but I think I learned what not to do in the classroom. The teacher I observed had NO control over her class and screamed at them all day, which got no responses from the students. The classroom was completely out of hand and the students did not get the attention and learning experience they should be getting in second grade. Observing this class and teacher really made me focus on my classroom management skills for the future and how to deal with another teacher that you do not necessarily get along with but have to work with. This teacher was also very unprofessional in that she would talk to me about teachers she did not like and about what the administration was doing that she didn't like. I was very uncomfortable and did not know if how I responded would effect how she treated me or how she would grade me in my observations. I hope my Level 2 will be a much better experience where I can learn what to do instead of what not to do.
2. I have not had a lot of opportunities to get experience because I played softball for my first 3 years here and it took up all my free time outside of school. The experiences I have had are with volunteering in my mothers classroom (first grade) and with being a consoler at the USF Softball camps over the summer which was with all ages from 7-16. I was most impacted by my time with the softball camps because it was a comfortable environment for me and it was easy for me to teach the subjects/tasks because it was something I was confident with because of all the background knowledge I had. I wish that I was more confident in certain subjects in my teaching abilities in the actual classroom. I am uneasy about math because I feel like it is not one of my strong points and I feel like that comes off to the students when I try to teach it. I hope to work on that when I get into the classroom this semester.
3. My expectations for this internship are to hopefully have a positive supervising teacher and a classroom where I can learn my strengths and weaknesses. I hope to improve my teaching abilities while learning from my teacher and peers on how to create engaging lessons and making a lasting impression on my students. My fear is that I will have another bad experience and have a really bad behaved class that I will have to spend more time reprimanding their behavior rather than teaching them the material. Lastly, my worst nightmare is that I have another supervising teacher that does not let me do anything and isn't a good support system for me when I am trying to learn.
4. Personally, the experiences that really stand out in my life are ones that are negative. I have only had a few teachers that I really enjoyed and learned from. These teachers all had the same qualities and really understood how to relate to their students while still keeping a professional barrier. These teachers were very fun and exciting to be around, they made me want to come to their class and made each class feel like it lasted 5 minutes because we never had time to be bored. I also really enjoyed these teachers because they taught their lessons with examples and real life situations that I really related to and paid attention to. I really felt comfortable in these teachers classrooms and never felt nervous to ask a question. I knew these teachers would be there to help me if I needed anything and liked that I could count on them. I wish I would have had more teachers like this when I was in elementary school but I didn't get a teacher that made this type of impact on my until I was in 7th grade.
