Field Experience #6

Field was a bitter sweet experience for me. The teacher I was with was a great person, very nice and kind to the children, but I didn't like the way she taught. She never used the arts in her lessons or her classroom, and she mostly had the students write notes from her lectures. That is not the kind of teacher I want to be. I want to have the arts in my classroom everyday as well as having the students interact and MOVE. The students in the 5th grade class were hard! They were very diverse and had a lot of disabilities. I have always thought a diverse classroom is ideal, and I still believe that is true, but I know that it is going to be hard. We incortopated the arts in some of the lessons we taught, but the students were not used to that so they were a little reluctant to start. Once they started with our process drama activity, they loved it! I enjoyed this creative arts class because I have always believed that the arts are very important in the classroom and it was great to learn ways to effectively teach them. I am not very talented in the arts, so it was a little uncomfortable to get out of my comfort zone, but it was good for me. I am a lot more reluctant to do things in front of adults, so I know that I will be ok infornt of kids because I did fine in this class. I plan to incorporate the arts as often as I can in my classroom, daily if possible. I will attend conferences, and keep up on the new things going on in the arts for elementary teachers. I will use the lesson plans created in this class, when possible, to help me with my students.