Week 16 Reflection

The first eight weeks of my internship will be completely different than what I've come to expect over the past two years during my tutor and participant years. For these eight weeks I will be in a different school and in a completely different age group. I will be at Clay Battelle for this time teaching seventh and eighth grade history. I've grown accustomed to elementary students at Suncrest Primary. Even though I've only been with students for two days, I already seen monumental differences between the two groups and I expect to see more throughout the rest of my time there. One of the largest changes is the attitude and behavior of the students. At Suncrest my students have been very young and more inclined to like school. Granted I've only been at Clay Battelle for two days, but the behavior of the students and their attitude is almost brand-new to me. The students at Clay Battelle are much more vocal, disrespectful, and inappropriate as a whole. Over my eight weeks there I'm thinking to myself how can I account for these behaviors during my teaching. It's going to be completely different than any teaching that I've experienced before; I've had discipline problems in the past teaching, but usually after addressing the situation that student or the problem ceased to exist. At Clay Battelle I feel like these problems will not just disappear after addressing it once. I'm nervous but even more than that excited to teach in this environment because I know that I will learn and polish many skills that I don't have or need to grow in. I think one of the biggest things that will be tested will be my patience with the students, especially if they're off task most of the time. It'll also challenge me in finding the different learning styles of my students. Even though they might get in trouble or cause problems I really hope that I can reach the students somehow that will benefit them.