My Student Teaching
I did my student teaching in Plainwell, Michigan. I was at Gilkey Elementary teaching second grade. I had an awesome experience and a wonderful mentor teacher, Mrs. Simon. She taught me everything I needed to survive in my own classroom.
My Favorite Lesson
I invited my principal in for one of my most favorite lessons. I was teaching the kids about recycling. We had started with talking about trash and such, read The Lorax, and then we created our own compost bin. I had the kids bring in several objects that they usually saw as litter in the streets or on the playground. We had Styrofoam, paper plates, pop cans, banana peels, apple cores, plastic bags, etc. The kids also said they always saw pieces of gum and wondered what happened to them. I chewed gum for a bit and threw it in too! We predicted what each object would do. Would it decompose or would it stay the same? We sat it outside our back door and let life happen. We put worms inside, let it rain, and let the sun shine down on it. A month later we decided to bring it in and see what happened to all the objects. I let the kids dig up the different objects and they got to see if there predictions came true. It was so fun to see the looks on their faces as we dug everything up. They were so into the lesson. I really felt that I made a difference that day. I really think that those kids will grow up and honestly think before throwing something on the ground. It was truly an awesome lesson.
Our Time With Reuben
Reuben, Sean, Kimmy, and Ben
Our class had been working on letter writing. We learned where to put the date, sentence structure, punctuation, greetings, and addressing envelopes. Mrs. Simon's daughter set us up with her friend Reuben who was serving in Iraq. We wrote letters to Reuben and sent him care packages. We even wrote him a book filled with all of our wishes that he return home safe and sound and thanking him for all the things he did for our country. We were fortunate enough to finally meet him. The kids were thrilled and even some in tears. They were so thankful that he was home safe for a while. It was a really good experience for myself and the kids.