Hello Team Bear!

Dear Bel,

You are such a wonderful practicum matchmaker. Thank you again for spending all the late nights and long hours to thoughtfully place my colleagues and me into the right placements. Though I've only had a day at my practicum placement so far, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I am at Eagle Mountain Middle School with Mr. James McConville in a grade 7/8 classroom. In this classroom, there are 28 students with varying abilities and skills, diverse personalities and dreams. Some are very quiet and sweet, and some are very energetic and vibrant. But all very much have a good heart. I'll explain more about class character in a bit, but let me first share with what my day looked like:

Class Introduction. When I arrived at the school, my School Associates (SA) was away at a staff meeting. He intended me to come earlier so that I can be in the classroom and get to the know the students while waiting for the morning bell to go off. I thought this was such a clever way for him to give me an opportunity to create an organic way to build rapport with students. At this time, I introduced myself individually to the students who walked in. I shared small talks with them, asked them for their names. By the morning bell went off, I was able to gather all the names of the students (though I did 100% memorize everyone's names) and all the students knew that they were going to have me as their teacher candidate in the upcoming months.

Attendance. When Mr. McConville returned to class, he had the class go back to their seats and get ready for the day (the students were buzzing around at this time). After recollecting the class, my SA passed me an attendance sheet and had me take attendance. And here's a twist: Mr. McConville asked the class to answer their name call with a simile. So if I were to call out a student name, they would reply with a random simile as "Hi, I am as fast as a hockey player". SO CLEVER EH? This created an opportunity for me to get to know the students in a personalized way while also giving students a voice in a classroom. BAAM. What a smart way to build a community in such a short task. After the attendance was over, James suggested that I could even continue to use a creative way to do name call during attendance. I think my next week attendance question would be: "If you could be any magical or non-magical animal, what would it be, what would it be and why?". I think it's just a fun and harmless way to be creative in the morning.

Forest Run. After attendance and morning announcements, the class were asked to go to the gym so that they can get changed for the forest run. Forest run, as the name suggests, is a run around a nearby forest park.

This activity was a joint exercise with other classes in the same bear pod. It was drizzling a bit, but I must say it was refreshing to go out. It was also very neat to see students outside a classroom setting. I did not get to see a lot students from my class in the forest, but I did get to see students talking and running with their friends during the run. By this time, I picked up a common trend in a middle year school: middle year students are very sociable and loves to spend time in relation with others. I knew this in my head, given all the education I had about adolescents in my undergraduate and volunteer experience. Nevertheless, it was another experience to actually witness a crowd of just adolescents and observe how they behave among themselves.

Flex Time. Once the class returned safely back into the classroom, the students were given a flex time. Flex time, short name for flexibility time, is meant for students to finish any unfinished work or silent reading. The plan was to originally do a structured lesson, Mr. McConville later informed me, but there was not enough time to do a thorough job to explain all concepts. So he decided to rather go through the lesson the next day. This flexibility on his part to tailor the lesson to the students reminded me of a concept learnt in class: reflective teaching (which is to meet where students are at - this case, it called the teacher to recognize that students would need more time than provided to go through a full lesson).

Lunch Time. Not much teaching is going on here, but I noticed how vibrant and welcoming the environment was in the staff room. Even the tables in the staff room was circular, promoting a sense of community. The staffs were engaged with each other in conversations. I also noticed that some teachers were doing final discussion wrap up to a project they were about to conduct the following period. This gave me an understanding that planning and confirming details with partnering teachers is crucial to lend itself to a smooth flow of the plan and coherency between the two teachers.

STEM Project. After lunch, my class and another class joined for a STEM Project. The challenge of the day was to build a bridge out of 150 toothpicks. Each group were given worksheets where it prompted them to scaffold their thinking. It first asked them to read different models of bridges they can build. Then they were asked to sketch a design of the bridge they would build, After, they had to begin gluing their bridges together. What I want to take away from this is the discrete teaching embedded in the lesson. In this project, the students knew that they had a goal to achieve: to build a bridge. But what they did not consciously know, is that they were learning. To get themselves to that goal, they first had to read the article and see what bridge model would be best for them. Then they had to collaborate in a group to decide on a design. Then they had to work together to glue toothpicks into a bridge. Meanwhile, this process required them to understand that each member of the group think differently, and that what appears to be such simple thing such as bridge need a lot background knowledge, intricate planning, and process of building it. Certainly, the students certainly were given autonomy to take their learning to their own hands.

Once the school end bell went, my SA so kindly took time off to go through a debrief with me.

Overall, this was such a positive experience.

I am looking forward to continually grow as an educator through classroom experience, by getting to know my students and my teacher role model.