Post 2 - Kyle Vanoverbeke

The second full week of field experience really gave me some great opportunities to develop as a teacher. I helped plan and lead small group rotations for a combined language arts and social studies lesson, during which we read mini-books about Native Americans and discussed various social studies themes (all of which were standards based), including identifying differences between various Native American tribes and identifying and explaining differences between the way of life of different Native American tribes before contact with white settlers and after.

On Thursday, our cooperating teacher was gone at a training, so Mychaela and I co-taught the entire morning by ourselves, which was one of the best experiences of the field experience to date. We did have a licensed substitute teacher in the room with us, but the sub didn't do anything because Mychaela and I had everything under control. There were a few instances where students pushed limits a little bit because the regular teacher was absent, but we handled those situations in a smooth and professional matter. For the most part, things operated like normal. It was especially helpful that both we and the students knew all the regular routines that are followed, so since there was not much out-of-the-ordinary in terms of changing how things normally operate, it all went very smoothly.

I hope that during our third full week of field experience, there are more opportunities to fulfill full teacher roles in the classroom.