10 hours 

Supporting Students with Disabilities:

 

I did my ten hours of fieldwork at Mount Desert Island High School. I focused on the Island Pathways program. This is the high school's intervention program for "at-risk" students. In this class, there were students with various degrees of disabilities. Many of the students told me that they are not worth educating, that they are terrible, and tried their best to scare me away from being a teacher. The teacher was able to use hands-on and project based assignments in order to challenge but accommodate for each student. She also taught them skills such as public speaking because she had them give community presentations. If I took anything away from my time in this class is that I want to work with these students now more than ever. The simple fact that they saw themselves as a lost cause breaks my heart. I know that intervention programs can be great for students because it gets them to graduate and gives them more of the life skills that they may need than academic skills a student on a college track may need. HOWEVER, there's something missing here, a growth mindset. At the end of my time in the Island Pathways class, I decided that I am going to show my students that I believe in them and that they are NOT a lost cause. A little positive attitude can go miles, and these students need someone like that in their lives. 

 

 

5 hours

Introduction to the Legal Process

 

In this class, we spent about 5 hours at the Maine State house. During this time we watched legislation be voted on, we got to talk to legislators about the legislative process, and most importantly to me, I got a one on one meeting with the Commissioner for the Department of Education. This observation of the legal process helped me piece together the process I was teaching to the middle schoolers at Conners Emerson. This observation inspired my moot court exercise and allows me to give a personal experience and confidence when talking about policy, process, and legislation in my future classrooms. 

 

 

32.3 hours

Secondary Methods

 

For a part of my Secondary Methods fieldwork, I spent time in a grades 6-8. I observed two different teachers, both in the realm of social studies. The teachers had very different teaching styles and being able to see that there is not one way of teaching, but many really inspired me to break the test-based and memorization of dates and names method of teaching I had been used to. During this time, I also realized that middle schoolers were not at the developmental level that I was expecting them to be at. I want to have a very discussion-based classroom, but the questions I asked the students during my visit seemed to not be at the level of critical thinking that they were at. I enjoyed my time in this classroom because it helped me solidify which age group I want to work with (not middle school).