When I reflect back on the past few months in student teaching, I saw a lot of similarities in why we teach. but i also saw a lot of differences in ways of teaching.
In my dyad, the teacher was a little bit more traditional. She used a lot of the given curriculum and had a great sense of authority in the classroom. The parents were very much involved because each parent was required to volunteer in the school for 3 hours a week per child. There were always around 3 adults in the room at most times. This seemed to help a lot because the students were allowed to do a lot of group work with adult supervision. Each student was able to be watched for most closely. I thought that this was good because the students did get that attention that they needed.
Although this was the case, I thought the ways in which some subjects were taught were a little bit bland. The reason I say this is because it was very instructional based. There wasn't much student engagement. The students didn't show too much that they were actually enjoying school.
In my main placement, the atmosphere is completely different. The teacher is much more engaging and uses other methods to teach. She uses some curriculum but tweaks it for the students that she is teaching. It is amazing to see! She has a good mix of discipline and fun that the students can really relate to and listen. She incorporates a lot of life lessons and lets the students know what it will be like in the future for them. She challenges them in many ways and has high expectations. I'm excited to see what she will be doing in the next few months. :)
That is a really interesting observation. I would have thought with all of the parent volunteers and the additional experiences they can provide to the classroom that would be the environment that would be more interesting and engaging for the students. Isn’t that in fact one of the arguments promoting co-op schools, that the volunteers have so much knowledge and experience they can offer students?
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