What was your elementary experience like? Be specific. Add pictures to your blog. What did you like the most about your observation time? What did you like the least? What did you learn about teaching and learning from your 6 weeks of elementary observations?
My experience was very informative and really fun. For a long time, I was under the impression that being a middle or high school teacher was tougher than elementary because the material is harder. Tutoring after school the last couple years started to slightly chip away at that as I realized that elementary concepts have little to no context to go off of; It's far more difficult than saying "those two are equal because of a rule you learned last year". Still, I never really stopped thinking that high school education was harder. However, just two months of first grade observations has completely blown the idea of elementary simplicity out of the water. Mrs. Smiley has to keep track of SO many things with each student. She may only have 1 class of 25 students, but she has to keep track of their progress in ALL subjects, and she has to really stay on top of everything. She's constantly staying after school for conferences with parents to help with the home aspect of education, and it's really just amazing how dedicated an early elementary teacher has to be. I never realized it, but first grade (and I would assume Kindergarten too) is probably the hardest to teach out of anything. I really enjoyed working with each of the kids on their reading, writing and arithmetic, but the 3 R's is where the old style methods end. I saw so many new methods for learning that even I never used in first grade, just ten years ago. The kids were using iPads and iPods, playing online educational games like Starfall, and even building towers with cups as part of their own Genius Hour. I really liked working individually with kids on reading/writing most, and I guess my least favorite thing was really just saying goodbye. I learned a lot, and it makes me wonder if there's a chance I'll want to teach elementary in the future instead of high school math.
My experience was very informative and really fun. For a long time, I was under the impression that being a middle or high school teacher was tougher than elementary because the material is harder. Tutoring after school the last couple years started to slightly chip away at that as I realized that elementary concepts have little to no context to go off of; It's far more difficult than saying "those two are equal because of a rule you learned last year". Still, I never really stopped thinking that high school education was harder. However, just two months of first grade observations has completely blown the idea of elementary simplicity out of the water. Mrs. Smiley has to keep track of SO many things with each student. She may only have 1 class of 25 students, but she has to keep track of their progress in ALL subjects, and she has to really stay on top of everything. She's constantly staying after school for conferences with parents to help with the home aspect of education, and it's really just amazing how dedicated an early elementary teacher has to be. I never realized it, but first grade (and I would assume Kindergarten too) is probably the hardest to teach out of anything. I really enjoyed working with each of the kids on their reading, writing and arithmetic, but the 3 R's is where the old style methods end. I saw so many new methods for learning that even I never used in first grade, just ten years ago. The kids were using iPads and iPods, playing online educational games like Starfall, and even building towers with cups as part of their own Genius Hour. I really liked working individually with kids on reading/writing most, and I guess my least favorite thing was really just saying goodbye. I learned a lot, and it makes me wonder if there's a chance I'll want to teach elementary in the future instead of high school math.