This week in ESCI 310, we reflected upon our field experiences with our peers. It was nice to be able to share our experiences and find commonalities and differences in where we were placed. Some people had very different experiences than me. I also found that a lot of people and their cooperating teachers took a very different route than my cooperating teacher and I had. For example, some of my peers did not teach a full unit, nor did they come up with a unit plan, their cooperating teacher instead had them teach day to day like a substitute teacher. Meanwhile, I on the other hand took over science for 2 full weeks and was required to make a unit plan in advance. I think that I liked the route my cooperating teacher and I took better because I was able to see further into the future and be more prepared although it was likely a lot more work than teaching day to day.
During our asynchronous class this week we read a chapter titled “teaching as Indwelling Between Two Curriculum Worlds”. Which discussed the differences between curriculum as plan compared to curriculum as lived experience. I think this reading was perfect coming back from our field experiences because it really resonated with us. I think had we read this chapter before our pre-internship it would not have made much sense to us. I felt this curriculum as plan vs curriculum as lived experience very deeply because as a pre-intern teacher, the curriculum as plan is very different compared to the lived curriculum. I felt like I often looked at the curriculum document and had no idea what I was going to do and I had no idea how to implement those outcomes into actual lessons, somehow I always found a way though even if it wasn’t in the exact way I was originally planning. Sometimes there was even differentiation between my lesson plans and the actual lesson, meaning what I had written down on paper for my lesson plans looked a lot different when it was “lived” or acted out in the classroom. Some wonderings I still have are related to long term planning. I really struggled with long term planning. I often had planned to get to a certain topic or lesson by the end of the week but by the time Friday rolled around we weren’t even half way through my plans and there was going to be no way I was going to get there. I want to know, how can I avoid this? The only positive to this was because I had over planned there was never a lull moment, we always had something to do. I connected this to some of the teachers in the Natural Curiosity Textbook when they talked about how planning is important but also you have to be able to think on the spot and adapt your plans. It was very relevant to me and my teaching experience.
Jess' Teaching Portfolio 