So here I am, two practicums behind me and one more to go. All and all I am feeling good about my progress thus far in the program. I think that I am starting to get the hang of this teaching thing and it appears that the students like the way that I teach. During the recently completed EDUC 490 practicum, I taught a variety of subjects like social studies, math and English language arts. Mixed in with all this I also taught several personal planning lessons and a French lesson. To say that this practicum was busy would be an understatement, however, I made it through and feel far more comfortable giving instruction than I did previously.

I found that in this practicum (much like the last one) I was able to develop awesome relationships with the students in the class. By the end, I felt like I had a good understanding of the students’ personalities, as well as their likes and dislikes. This was important to me as I feel that personal understanding is vital in passing on knowledge. If there is no connection with the students, there can be no learning. As well, students feel far more comfortable when they are being taught by someone that they feel comfortable with.

Another thing that I thought was great about this practicum was the fact that I had freedom to teach students whatever I wanted (in accordance with discussions between my CT and I). As I am passionate about a lot of things, I was able to direct the learning to cover things that I already knew a lot about. In one unit we talked about river boats on the Fraser river. As I am passionate and somewhat knowledgeable about rivers and boats I was able to give students context that they would not have been able to get out of the textbook alone. In my opinion this is what teaching should be like. Students, in conjunction with the teacher learn about interesting things and explore topics together. In my unit about steam boats, the kids made me consider things that I had never thought about before. In this, I was able to expand my own knowledge base while at the same time teaching the kids something new.

In the future, I am going to work on my wait time and classroom management skills. Although I feel that I have a good idea of how to manage a class, I consistently see veteran teachers doing it better than me. For this reason, I will keep working on my approach and refining it to be as effective as possible. I have several ideas as to how this can be done and am looking forward to trying them out in my next practicum.

We will see what happens going forward. I am somewhat nervous for the long practicum, however, I think it will be a good thing. Until then I will keep working on my assignments and learning what I can.