Final Secondary Internship Reflection

My first thought walking in to the internship: Is high school going to be the setting for me? My thoughts walking out of my internship today: High school is certainly a grade level I would love to teach.  I never knew that I would be able to make connections with older students.  The past three years (and really my whole life) I have worked with younger children.  I never had much interaction teaching, tutoring, or interacting with students older than ten.  Hesitant would certainly be the word I would use to describe how I felt going into this internship.  Confident would be the word I would use coming out of the internship.  This placement certainly verified my desire to teach in a resource setting.  I was not with my students in this placement for very long due to snow days, but I was able to make a connection with them that made me comfortable teaching and allowed me to make personal connections to what we were reading in English.  

After this internship, I have learned that there is always room for learning.  I have discovered and been taught so much new information, especially about transition, and feel confident that I will successfully be able to implement a transition plan for students.  I also feel confident to be able to facilitate learning for all of my students no matter what the age.  In the elementary setting, you see your students every day.  In a secondary setting, there could be students on your caseload that you don't even have in class.  This internship has prepared me to be organized in any educational setting and track student progress more frequently as well as document more frequently.  I am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to teach in a secondary setting.  I learned so much from my students and look forward to possible job opportunities in the secondary setting in the future.  

Internship Week 6 (Week 8)

Connecting literature and classwork to personal life has created some great opportunities to get to know my students.  We read the story, Speaking of Courage by Tim O'Brien in my Junior English class.  The overall concept I wanted my students to take away from this reading was the theme of the story.  We established that the story was centered around the theme, "Courage" (although, we understood that theme of a story should not be summed up in one word).  My students and I 'discussed' (and I use that word lightly- I am still working on my students getting to open up to me) what it meant to be courageous.  I used exit slips for them to record their thoughts because I felt they were more comfortable with writing things down instead of speaking in front of the class.  I got some wonderful responses.

The biggest success I took away from this unit would be the poster project I did with the juniors.  I had them create a poster with a quote or saying about courage that they felt applied to their life.  Then, the students had to create a visual to go along with the quote they chose and explain how they have displayed courage in their lives.  I was so pleased with the posters and had students coming up to talk to me about what they drew and the situation they portrayed through their drawing.  I learned a lot about my students and will be able to draw from their personal lives and interests in future lessons.

Sometimes, all it takes for a student to open up to you is by choosing multiple means of expression for them to do so.  While discussion has been prevalent and effective in my past classes, perhaps projects are the way to go with my junior students.  I am looking forward to my final two weeks of teaching and hope to connect even more with the students to make learning fun and relatable to them.