Reflecting on my internship as a whole I would say that what went really well has been my mentor. She has been absolutely amazing. She has answered every single question I’ve had and helped me throughout the entire month of me learning. She has taught me to be amazingly patient and I could not have picked a better mentor. One thing I would have done differently was when I accidentally gave one of the kids a hard time about the number of projects he had finished but he only had to do a certain amount because he goes to another class for a lot of the day. What has really stood out to me has been that there are over thirty kids in every classroom in grades four and above. It’s very hard to get all the kids to settle down when there are so many and when Mrs. Vick’s and Mrs. Fields’s classes collaborate there just under seventy kids which is extremely hard to keep under control but they are able to do it which is amazing to me. Another thing that has really stood out to me is that all the kids in every single grade have an Ipad. This has stood out to me because it’s such an amazing tool for learning but I would have never thought the school district would pay for over a thousand Ipads (plus teachers). Overall I’ve had an amazing time and am super happy that I’ve been able to be here.
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To the future sophomores I give the advice of do something that you really want to do. I chose interning with a teacher because that’s what I want to do when I grow up. After my experience at my internship I have decided that I definitely want to be a teacher so I’m really happy with how this has turned out and that’s how everyone should feel after their internship. I hope that all of next year’s juniors are as happy with their internship that I am.
Throughout my internship I’ve had a little more time at home to look at colleges and I have made the decision that I want to get my BA in elementary education and my MA in secondary education teaching English. I’ve been looking at around ten colleges and have actually started emailing some about the degrees I want. So far not all of them have what I want and it’s not always easy finding a university that has a good education college for people who want to be teachers. I am hoping that soon I will have a more narrow list and that all the universities I’ve chosen have what I need to make my educational goals a reality.
I am most thankful for my mentor, Mrs. Fields. She has really taught me that being a teacher is more than knowing what you want to teach and having lesson plans. It really is teaching to the whole child and I am also extremely thankful for Mrs. Vick; she wasn’t my mentor on paper but she has been super awesome and has answered any questions I’ve had throughout the month. I have grown a whole new appreciation for my current and past teachers; they go through so much just to teach us and I truly hope that when I am a teacher that I am half as amazing as they’ve been.
The adults around me were extremely patient, caring, very knowledgeable about everything they are teaching, and very open to new ideas. I hope that in the future I grow to be as patient and well informed about the subjects I teach the way these teachers are. They are so amazing and have really opened my eyes to the life of a teacher. I am extremely hopeful that after high school I am still able to have the same amazing learning options that I have now and that even when I am no longer a student I still continue to learn and grow. My internship has definitely pushed me towards a teaching career path. After today’s field trip I really got a taste of how stressful it can be to be solely responsible for students. It’s scary and stressful but at the same time I really liked helping them learn why things in the science center worked the way they did. Pictured above is the students learning about shadows.
For my POL I will be relying on memory, cue words from the presentation, and small note cards. To prepare for any questions that will be asked I will be having my mentor and other teachers asking me questions while on the bus for the field trip tomorrow. I have also had to explain what I’m doing, what an internship is, and why I’m at the school to teachers at the school, substitute teaches, and a couple parents. While working here I definitely appreciate how much patience I’ve gained and how much teachers have. They are amazing at being asked the same question thirty times and calmly answering it. My overall contribution towards the school has been to help the children learn and be able to help Mrs. Fields and Mrs. Vick out during the day. I’m hoping that when I leave the students will be at a higher level writing and a higher level of math. This experience has been super amazing and I’m really glad I got to spend the month with Mrs. Fields and her students.
Communication and self advocacy go hand in hand with my internship. I have to be able to speak in front of a room and I have to be able to tell my mentor if I can’t do something or if I don’t know how to do something. My internship is all communication because I have to help these fourth graders learn new things and understand them. If they don’t then I’m not doing my internship correctly. Self advocacy is important for me as an intern because if I don’t know how to handle a situation then I definitely have to tell my mentor and ask for help or advice; especially when dealing with problem students. Being able to communicate with the teachers and just asking questions has been a huge help because no teacher does the exact same thing and I enjoy hearing the stories from the teachers that are higher or lower grade levels because it really shows how students can be more or less mature. Working here I’ve realized that all the teachers who eat lunch together are very close with each other and that when new people are added to the mix they are very open and friendly. The teachers don’t get a lot of time to talk except at lunch or sometimes during recess or PE. All the fourth grade classes have PE at the same time and the teachers chose to do that so they could have a prep period during the school time. Unfortunately they only have it once a week instead of every day. They all realized this was something they needed when there was a lot of complaining that there wasn’t enough time to prep for the week unless they did it while at home which was something they did not want to do. Self-advocacy and communication made the time they have for prep possible because if they hadn’t said anything then they wouldn’t have the small amount of prep they have. Even though all the teachers are friends they do have to keep up a sense of professionalism because this is a place of work not a place to just hang out.
I am currently about halfway through my internship and I absolutely love it. My project has been to teach writing lessons to the students nearly every day and unfortunately since my mentor’s schedule has been so full of other lessons I didn’t get to start until Friday the 20th. So on Friday I gave them very little instruction and told them to write as much as possible about their favorite animal; I did not let them use their I-pads for any reason because I wanted to see what they knew on their own. I already knew they would need more instructions but what some of them had written was more advanced than I would have thought. Today I gave a lesson on “there, they’re, and there”which was something that I knew they needed a lot of work on based off what they had written on Friday. Their prompt today was “What would you do if there was no rules for a day?” Along with answering the prompt they had to include there/they’re/their at least once, have at least five sentences per paragraph, at least three paragraphs. I always tell them spelling doesn’t matter because I don’t want them to spend ten minutes looking at their I-pads. Today they had between twenty and thirty minutes to finish but most only made it to two paragraphs. I also made a mistake in my teaching and didn’t clarify that “there” can be used in a couple different ways but otherwise their writing was better than on Friday. My goal is that by the end of next week I will be able to compare the very first thing they wrote and the very last thing they wrote and there will be a noticeable difference in the fact that they are better written and using the correct forms of words. When I first started this project I was going to include a small science lesson but I decided to not do that because the rain will not allow it and because I wanted to keep my project focused on one thing rather than it all being english then some random science bit that has nothing to do with it. While working on my project and with the kids in general I have learned that I have a lot more patience than I ever thought, I can be in front of a room and not get a ton of anxiety about talking, and that teaching is definitely the job I want. Being here at my internship and teaching is an experience I will never forget because the kids were absolutely amazing. The biggest learning experience I’ve gotten out of this is working with children who are in general ed but shouldn’t be and working with kids who are going to argue with me about pretty much everything that I say. Overall I’ve really learned to have a lot of patience and to be able to put my foot down which was and is something that I still struggle with in everyday life.
To compare my time here and my time at school it’s not very different at all but at the same time it is extremely different. Here at Cajon Park I am like a teacher compared to when I’m at school I am a student. They are alike because there is still a start and end time, a lunch time, and the buildings are filled with students and teachers. They are different because I am teaching while also learning, I am correcting papers, filling out go-home papers, and many other things that a teacher would normally be doing. I am also teaching in front of the kids instead of being taught to. My internship has reinforced the fact that I want to be a teacher for younger kids. My mentor has really shown me how rewarding this job is and that even though there are downfalls it’s still a really good and fun place to be every day. I also love the fact that I’m learning something new every day whether it be about me, the students, the teachers, or teaching. I love the real life experience that I am getting here and am extremely happy that I have the chance to do this. I will admit that I do miss being in school just a little because I like seeing my friends every day but I also enjoy the process of learning something new every day. Even though I am not in my own classes I am still learning about things that happen in a classroom, I do math every day with the students, and I learn historical facts that I didn’t know before. Every day I’ve been here has been a successful day not just for me but for my mentor and the students. Since I was the first ever high school student to request to intern in the Santee School District I am hoping that it will open the door for other interns to come here and work with other teachers and students.
Some limitations I recognized immediately was that I would kind of just jump into a lesson without fully knowing what we’re going to be doing or what the next step is. I also quickly realized that I do not remember the fourth grade curriculum. To fix these problems I ask a lot of questions to the teachers before and after lessons so I can get a better understanding of the whats and whys of what they are learning. I also do most of the worksheets they do so that I have the answers and to also make sure they aren’t too tricky for them. Another problem that I’ve recognised in myself is that I get distracted easily; to work through this problem I’m going to get better at expressing to students that I am talking or helping another student and will be available to help as soon as I’m done.
The biggest challenge I’ve faced at my internship has probably been myself. Sometimes I get really worried that the kids don’t like me but then one of them will beg me to be their partner in reading or to sit next to them during math. When I stop worrying about if they don’t like them then I start to worry if maybe they see me as more of a friend than a teacher but I am quickly absolved of this worry when I am upfront teaching and I can see that they are not only listening but respectfully listening. A challenge my mentor and the other teachers have experienced is the fact there are thirty-three children that are all at different levels of reading, writing, math, and other skills but they all need to be brought up to or past the end of the year standards. Two of the hardest things about teaching all those students is making sure that they all get it and if they don’t then how do we help them understand and trying to find the best way to keep the higher end students busy so they don’t become bored. Mrs. Fields and Mrs. Vick have solved this problem is by splitting their two classes into the higher and lower math groups so they can try challenge all the kids at all the different levels. And since I am with Mrs. Fields I work with the lower math group and the two of us often split the group up even more so I can work with the kids who are further behind than they should be. I have also worked with the higher end math group and just to challenge them I started introducing them to long division which they love. Working with the students is great and is teaching me how to prepare for problems that could arise while I am a teacher.
I decided to look at Carlos Nava, Tzvi Weber, and Timothy Matista through their DPs. I chose Carlos because I kind of already knew what he was doing but wanted to learn more; Tzvi because he’s at the same school as me and I wanted to compare kindergarten to fourth grade; and Timothy because I was curious about what he was doing. Tzvi and I have the most in common because we are both working with children but he thinks his students might be out to get him while my students respect and listen to me. Carlos and Timothy are not teaching and not working a bunch of other people like me to where I am working with multiple teachers to get PE activities going or working with the math groups. I am definitely having a ton of fun and I think Timothy is too but Carlos and Tzvi may not be or just don’t seem to be from their blog posts. I hope things are turning out well for everyone though.
My internship has actually solidified the career I want. I definitely want to be a teacher in the future and I really like working with the kids. Today’s math hour is a good example of what I like because I was working with a mix of kids who were just starting to understand division and kids who wanted me to give them a division problem where the dividend was sixteen digits long. I even had the chance to introduce long division to a student and he loved learning it and figuring out the problem I gave him. Being able to work with kids at a mix of levels is really awesome because I love seeing when the information just clicks and they completely get it; whether they are on a lower level or higher level. I am absolutely going to be a teacher and I am extremely excited.
Social interactions at my workplace are very serious, humorous, and often full of drama. The students come up to me and many of the teachers for many reasons but a lot of the time it is to tattle. They are tattling because the subject is serious to them but it then causes drama between the students. When the interactions are humorous it is more often because the students are not trying to be funny. Between the students they try to talk as much as possible even when I am trying to get them to quiet down so I can teach. Between me and teachers it can be serious or light hearted conversation. I eat in the teacher’s lounge with all the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade teachers so we all sit and talk every day. Socialization is important for us and the students because it builds a relationship with the students so they trust you which is important when you’re a teacher. Having a good student teacher relationship positively affects the school because the student is more willing to learn, have a positive classroom experience, and an overall good school experience.
After being at my internship for a week I have decided that I will do one of two things as my project. I will either build and teach a regular lesson which will be presented as my IPOL or I will do a mini project with the students and present that as my IPOL in which I showcase the work they have done in a project I designed for them. My mentor has given me free reign and is extremely supportive in helping me decide what I want to do for this project. To complete this project I will need to use my creative skills, my knowledge of the fourth grade, and the cooperation of the students. If the kids don’t find my project fun and something they are learning from then I will have to scrap the idea and come up with a new one. My project will be beneficial to the students because they are learning something new and hopefully they will have fun while doing it.
My internship benefits quite a few people. Since I am working with a fourth grade teacher the teacher benefits because she has someone to help in the classroom. The students are also benefitting because now instead of having one person try to focus on all thirty-three students it is now two people focusing on them. In the above picture I am running a math group with students who need a little extra help. I originally started out with only three students but then four or five joined for some extra help. Overall I spend the day teaching and helping students with their work. Since I have started I have taken over teaching language arts, I run some history lessons, and every day I run a math group.
At least once a day every day my mentor teams up with Mrs. Vick and during those times I help teach history or math or I walk around answering questions as the students have. Often I will stop and ask a student if they understand what they are doing and why they are doing it. If they can’t answer either of those questions I will sit down with them and talk to them about the work they are doing so I can help them understand what they are learning. My work is positively benefiting not just me but teachers and students. One of my coworkers is Mrs. Vick. She teaches fourth grade and often teams up with Mrs. Fields during the day. Mrs.Vick went to high school at USDHS which is now known as Cathedral. For college she spent a year at Chico State but family problems brought her back to San Diego and she went to Mesa for a year, then switched to Grossmont where she only took a couple class. After Grossmont she switched to USD for about a year and a half then she finished at National University. She decided to become a teacher because that’s what her mom’s job was and she spent a lot of time in the classroom. The only other job she even considered was to be a nurse in the neonatal ICU but decided to not do that because she couldn’t take the heartbreak. She has taught first, third, and fifth but her favorite fourth. She loves it because the students are learning responsibility for their own actions, they begin to get a sense of humor, they are also beginning to think more critically, and they are becoming more mature. She likes to see how the students grow throughout the year. As a teacher one of her favorite things is getting to discover new things with her students which is something that happens during a simple lesson when a student asks a question so she’ll look it up and they all learn something new. One of her least favorite things is the politics. She described this as when a student is below reading level and when asked why it's because the student has at home problems but all the state cares about is test scores. She really believes in teaching to the whole child but it’s hard when all that is wanted is good test scores. When I asked her what drives her to be a good teacher she said the relationships she builds with her students and the families which is when she learns their story and that her heart goes out to them. She absolutely loves teaching and it’s something that she is very passionate about.
What surprises me is how quickly I was able to get up in front of the class or both classes and teach. It's been a lot of fun and my mentor always asks me if I’m comfortable with teaching what I’m teaching. The students are also super amazing and I am surprised by how quickly I’ve been able to learn most of their names. I am super excited for next week and can’t wait to see what happens.
(Due to unforeseen circumstances I do not have a picture of me teaching yet.) My company is Cajon Park school. I could not find an official mission statement on their website but they do have this: “Cajon Park inspires meaningful learning through creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking to prepare learners for an ever-changing world.” This basically means that as the world continues to advance in technology and the way we communicate with each other the school promises to also advance and teach the students how to interact and become functional adults in today’s society. This statement is fully supported in the way the students are taught on a daily basis in one way and that is the fact that the students all have Ipads that are district issued and used throughout the day. Yesterday the students and I were doing math review and the way they showed me their work and answers was by going into notes and writing the problems out. When they were finished they held the Ipad up so I could check their answer. Another way they use the Ipads is during english when they are doing vocab they are free to use google to find synonyms, antonyms, and definitions rather than a thesaurus or their textbook like they would have had to do in the past. My mentor, Mrs. Fields, and another teacher Mrs. Vick recently decided to enter a contest to win a 3D printer for one of their classrooms and ended up winning so very soon they will be using that in their teaching process. As the world changed and uses technology more and more in everyday life the teachers have to adapt their lesson plans and teaching skills to match. In the picture above is some of the students from both classes being read to by a guest teacher with Mrs. Fields sitting in the corner.
In this picture (left to right) is Mrs. Vick, me, and Mrs. Fields. Mrs. Fields is my official mentor and Mrs. Vick is like another mentor. They team up with their classes at least once a day so sometimes I am teaching a room of 60+ students.
My mentor Mrs. Fields grew up in the santee area and went to West Hills for high school. She took AP classes in high school, went to Grossmont College and got her bachelor degree at Cal state Marcos. She got her masters from Brandman and then did some online classes from UCSD to get GATE certified. For the past ten years she’s been working at Cajon Park and about seven years ago she was actually my fourth grade teacher. Growing up most of the adults in her life were teachers but mostly it was her mom who inspired her to be a teacher. For my internship I hope to know what grade I would like to teach or if I even still want to be a teacher. My biggest fear would actually be realizing that I don't want to be a teacher and then not knowing what direction I want to take my life in. I strongly hope that the kids like me and that this experience will be valuable in helping me decide what I want to be when I go into college.
For my internship I chose to go to Cajon park (a traditional school) which is a school in Santee that teaches students from kindergarten to seventh grade. Today was my site visit and the goal of it was to get to know my mentor, Hannah Fields, the students, and get to know what happens in an average fourth grade classroom. Mrs. Fields was my fourth grade teacher which is one of the reasons why I chose her. The other reason I chose her were because she genuinely cares about her students in a way that is not seen often. She stuck out in my memory because she was a great teacher and because she was always very kind and fair towards students. After being with her for just an hour I realized that I could not have possibly chosen a better mentor. She made me feel very welcome. showed me how things were run and just made me immediately feel like a part of the classroom.
Mentor Interview Questions 1. What is a typical workday like? Her immediate answer was that there are a lot of transitions because she is their only teacher for the whole day that when they switch from one subject to the next it may take a while and it takes a lot of work on her part to teach them all that they need to do and keep it a fun environment. Her other answer was “Teaching to the whole child”. She is not just the person that stands at the front of the room and gives a spelling test or whatever she is teaching at the moment. She is also helping and teaching them to grow emotionally. 2. What are your main duties and responsibilities? Her main duties are to teach the California standards and to connect with the child. She wants the students to really feel like they are their own person “not just a child in room 25”. 3. How is the organization structured? The school itself teaches kindergarten to eighth grade, there are four 4th grade classes, heer class has its own daily schedule, in her classroom there are four tables with eight students at each (there are actually 33 students in total so one table has nine students), and she teaches her students through collaboration with each other, her, and Google (all students have Ipads paid for by the district). 4. Tell us about your path in getting to where you are today- what is your educational history and work experience prior to working here? She started off with some AP at West Hills High School, went to Grossmont college, got her bachelor degree at Cal State Marcos, her masters from Brandman, did some online classes from UCSD to get GATE certified, and she’s been working at Cajon Park for the past ten years. She originally wanted to major in history but switched to liberal studies and minored in history and got her teaching certificate. Most of the people around her while she was growing up were teachers and her mom was a pre-school teacher so that also really helped her to become a teacher. 5. Why did you choose to work here? Her exact words were, “I didn’t. It chose me.” When Mrs. Fields first applied to the district she got interviewed by the principal (at the time) and the principal liked her so much that principal called other schools in the district and told them to not interview Mrs. Fields because she was being hired at Cajon park; Mrs. Fields did not know the principal had done that's why she says the job chose her. 6. What qualifications do employees need to be successful here and how are those qualifications acquired? To work at the school as a teacher an employee needs to have at least have a bachelor’s degree and teaching certificate. To be successful a teacher needs to have an open mind and be able to teach to the whole child. 7. What other personality traits, skills, or knowledge are important to be successful here? Other things a teacher needs to be successful is to be kind, compassionate, selfless, and to know that your work time will definitely bleed into your personal time. 8. What advice do you have about working here? I changed the question to “What advice do you have about working here?” Her answer was that it is an extremely rewarding job and that you get to relive childhood memories, such as reading the Polar Express, kids look up to you so you have to be a positive role model, and to be mindful of parents because sometimes they can get mean so you need to have thick skin. |
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