What are your goals for the field experience you will begin next week?  

Describe how you will combine your current knowledge and skills as an educator to “meet students where they are” while you are in your field experience?  

As you move into this new educational environment, what adaptive skill will you employ to help you navigate this opportunity?  

Moving into Sophomore Block is a new experience with a lot of different factors at play. There are many things that you can focus on or reflect on while working at your placement. Many of these are what you look to gain from the experience, how I use my pre-existing knowledge, and what skills I need to use while I am at my placement. I am expecting to gain a lot of information and experience from this and I can put my expectations into those three categories.
There are many different goals I have for field experience and I think the major goal I have for myself is to learn the classroom environment and interaction whether it be between the students themselves or with the teacher. This can better overall prepare me for the future so that as a teacher I can better respond to certain situations within the classroom. This goal is most important to me because it affects every aspect of teaching and learning depending on the classroom environment and how it is conducted. Another goal I want to achieve within my field experience is to see myself as an educator now. This will be a new experience as an official student teacher under the title of teacher and people view me as a teacher. This is different from all other experiences I have had as an educator and to be able to present myself as a teacher will be a new moment and milestone within my educational process.
Being an educator also requires me to apply my knowledge within the classroom. I have gained many theories and new knowledge to assist with teaching in all my educational classes. There has been consistent teaching within all my classes which has been seeing the individual needs and background of the students. This can apply to multiple categories such as developmental needs, background/cultural needs, physical needs, and language needs. In the four classes I took for sophomore block, this has been the most important part of the knowledge I need to use within the classroom. I can use this knowledge by learning about student’s backgrounds through the teacher’s instruction and see how he applies it within the lesson. Much of the background knowledge I will have about the students is the basic fact that probably most of them are from Wisconsin or live in Wisconsin which is still an important factor when creating a lesson plan. You can also see how to assist students with accommodations within the classroom and how the cooperating teacher differentiates his lesson to meet these needs. In case there is an ELL learner, there may be times where they are pulled from the class which I can also view as a student teacher. In viewing a student’s developmental needs, they are in high school so I have to focus on creating a lesson or seeing how the cooperating teacher uses the developmental needs of high schoolers within his lesson. They are more abstract and complex thinkers so as an educator the lesson allows the students to use their independent thinking to solve or research on their own. These are all factors in meeting students’ needs and I have to remain cognizant of these factors to be successful at education.
An adaptive skill I will utilize would be changing how my day is organized. My schedule has shifted so that means my social and life skills need to be adapted for. I will have to be able to communicate with my cooperating teacher and the students in his classroom. This all goes with organization, I have to change my morning routine and find a schedule that works within the school so that I can eat lunch and be able to prepare it. I will also have to change my outfit into professional attire to make myself more presentable and like an educator. All these skills have to be changed so that I can be prepared for teaching in the future and now.