Caroline Elizabeth Hall
Pre-Teaching Experience
For my pre-teaching experience, I had the opportunity to spend a week with Mrs. Stanley’s first grade class and experience what it would be like to teach children of this age group. I was able to perform my pre-teaching experience in May, which allowed me to experience the chaos that inevitably comes with the school year coming to an end. I was blessed to be able to see end-of-the-year tasks firsthand, as this can be one of the most stressful times for a teacher.
One of the most useful things I learned the week I spent with Mrs. Stanley's class was about brain breaks. I had previously heard about brain breaks from researching online but absolutely loved the way she incorporated them into her classroom. When she felt the children were getting distracted, she would go to her computer and pull up a childrens’ dancing video. She displayed it for her students on her SMARTboard, and the children mimicked the dancers on the video. The students loved dancing to the music and it allowed them to get moving for a short period of time so they were not behind on the lesson being taught.
The week I spent with Mrs. Stanley and her class was extremely special to me. I loved coming into the class each morning and hated leaving each day. I feel like from this experience, I knew without a doubt that I wanted to be a teacher.
Service Learning
I had the wonderful opportunity to complete my service learning experience in Mrs. Wall’s fourth grade class at Ogletree Elementary School. Having the opportunity to work with a fourth grade class was an enriching experience as it was a much older age group than I have worked with in the past. One of the biggest lessons I learned from the time spent with Mrs. Wall's class is the importance of being an attentive listener. Children think differently than many adults and can often be hard to understand. Each morning I entered Mrs. Wall’s class, the students were having their math lesson. Math is not my strongest subject, which I believe benefits me because I can personally relate to the students that struggle.
One of my first mornings at the school I was walking around while the students worked math problems from the lesson they were just taught. One student raised her hand, and I walked to her desk to see if she needed any help. She read the word problem to me and did not understand why she had gotten an answer that was not one of the four given answer choices. Looking over her work, I did not understand the thought process she used while attempting the problem. I had to be very attentive to the student as she tried to explain to me her reasoning. It was uncomfortable at first because I was embarrassed I was having so much trouble understanding a fourth grade math problem. After she explained her work to me a second time, I was able to understand where her reasoning went wrong, and I helped her correctly solve the problem. I believe that understanding the way children think becomes much easier with practice, and I was thankful to have had many hours of practice using this tool throughout my entire experience.
Although being an attentive listener is very important, it can also be challenging. During my time at Ogletree Elementary, I often had the opportunity to work with certain students in Mrs. Wall’s class that struggled with their math assignments. Mrs. Wall allowed me to work with struggling students individually and in small groups. I had to be very attentive and patient with each of these students so that I could understand how to best help them learn the material.
Classroom Experience
During the fall of 2015, I had another opportunity to complete 25 volunteer hours at Ogletree Elementary. Through this experience, I was able to expand my knowledge of teaching different age groups as I worked in a third grade classroom. I absolutely loved this age group and enjoyed spending time being a mentor to the students in the class. My cooperating teacher had a diverse classroom, and much of the time I spent with them many students were gone to special education teachers and ELL classrooms. Because of this, I especially loved coming into the classroom on Fridays because many of the students stayed the entire time I spent mentoring. The class I worked with had two students that have IEP’s and six students that needed extra help with the English language and mathematics. I had grown exceptionally fond of working with the two IEP students as well as all of the students in the class throughout the entirety of the experience. Previously, I had not worked with any special needs students in a general education classroom. I felt that I grew as an aspiring teacher from the experience I had helping each of these students with their classwork, exams, reading and writing. I am so thankful for the time I was able to work with these students individually and getting to see how the teacher handled instruction that meets the needs of all of her students.
Although I spent a short amount of time with the class, I was able to take a lot out of the experience. I learned what it means to be an amazing teacher and the importance of knowing your students. I love the relationship my cooperating teacher had with her students and felt that the children greatly respected her because she took the time to know each child in her class individually. I also learned more about the development of IEP's, how the common core is changing, helpful ways to discipline and manage a classroom of this age, and was able to help research fun activities for lesson plans. Each time I step into a classroom excites me for my future and I am so blessed to have found a career that I am so passionate about.
Boys & Girls Club of Greater Lee County
Becoming a student at Auburn University allowed me to learn about many organizations where I could be involved helping children learn and grow as individuals. One organization I learned about on campus was the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Lee County. There are two locations, Auburn and Opelika, and I have had the privilege to work in both.
Through volunteering with the boys and girls club, I have been exposed to seeing children play and learn in a different setting than I usually see in the school systems. I have learned different techniques used in disciplining children and have been able to work with students of many different backgrounds in an outside setting. The Boys and Girls Club emphasizes the importance of learning and expanding knowledge in a meaningful way.
During the time I spent volunteering at the Auburn and Opelika locations, I was able to help individual students work on homework and reading skills, play with the children during recess and help them explore their creativity with different art projects and activities.