shadowing+day

So you spent a whole day following a host teacher around his/her school.....

What was different about this kind of fieldwork experience? What did you learn?
Let's try to use this page as a __dialogue__ not just a bulletin board. You should not only describe your experience here: you should also respond to what you read about other people's adventures. 12/4- Julia Travis I found it to be very valuable to spend the entire day in the schools. I really got to see what a whole day was like. The teachers have very little free time, even when it seems like they should have free time. For instance I thought that we might get a break for recess or lunch, but at both of these periods my teacher and I had to stay and watch our class. Even when we would give the students off to another teacher for a period like computers, we still had to stay there. It was great to see what arrival and dismissel was like. I think these are two crucial transitions during the day. It is very hard to get students ready to leave for there buses. One student wanted to continue playing with her friends and another was concentrated on her homework. Seeing general transitions was informing too. Transitions seem to be one of the hardest parts of the day. Students become so loud from moving around that it is sometimes hard to settle them down. I learned a lot from that day. Teachers definetly do not have it easy. We have to come early and stay late. You have to work very hard to become a teacher. Spending one day in the schools reinforced this.

12/13 - Lottie Maker I agree with Julia that it was extremely valuable to spend a full day in the classroom. My second term schedule actually allowed me to spend a full day in my fieldwork classroom every Wednesday. This turned out to be beneficial to me (the more time in the classroom the better!) and to the teacher. She started planning her Wednesday schedule around the fact that I would be available to help. She planned lots of small group work and let me work one-on-one with some students who wouldn’t normally get the extra attention they need. Having that amount of time (8.5 hrs a week including my Monday visits) in the classroom allowed me to really get a feel for the students and the teacher and begin to see how a day, week and year can be structured. For more detailed observations see my observation write-ups for Nov 1, Nov 8, Nov 15, and Nov 29.