I was fortunate enough to be able to spend the entire sixteen weeks at Chappelow K-8 Arts Magnet school in Greeley-Evans District 6 in Evans, Colorado. I taught four periods of middle school art, went to lunch and finished the day teaching art to Kindergarten, 2nd, 1st and 5th grades. It was a bit of a grueling schedule, but teaching eight periods of art each day gave me a wealth of teaching knowledge, which I am grateful for. Student teaching is an interesting experience because no matter how hard you worked in your practicum classes and how prepared you think you are, nothing can prepare you for how stressful the start of student teaching is and how exhausted you will be at the end of the day. You go from being an observer to the person that must make thousands of micro decisions in a day. If you are as fortunate as I was, you will be paired with cooperating teachers who allow you to have input on lesson planning from the start. I am grateful that Mrs. Myers and Mrs. Burczyk welcomed me into their classrooms as a cooperating teacher and I was allowed to give my input and try out new things. They also ensured I was always reflecting on my student teaching practice so I could be proud of my successes and improve on my weak areas.
I enjoyed teaching at Chappelow because of the diverse student population. The school's curriculum is focused on the arts and arts integration and students come from all over the area to attend through open enrollment. I enjoyed learning about the students' different cultures and life experiences and having those conversations is my favorite thing about teaching. One area of growth I had as a student teacher was to focus on making sure I took the time to have those conversations with all the students. I was about a month into student teaching when I realized that it is easy to focus on the kids who go above and beyond in the classroom and it is easy to focus on the students who are struggling, but what about the students in the middle? Those students fly under the radar, but I wanted them to know that I was interested in their stories as well. My student teaching experience has made me realize that we come into the classroom with the best of intentions, but it takes a lot of hard work to be present in every moment each day and reflecting on my teaching practice must be a constant in my career so I am always improving as a teacher to provide the best possible art education for the students.
Both classrooms I was placed in were choice-based, which allows for maximum student engagement in theory, but in practice this is more difficult than having every student do the same project because there are a lot of moving parts to keep track of. If I assign a class a landscape painting I know what everyone is working on and what exact materials are needed for the day. In a choice classroom it is a delightful suprise what students will need each day because some students sew, some are making sculptures and some are at the pottery wheel. What I learned from this teaching experience was how important it is to be extremely organized as an art teacher and to keep a daily check-in sheet to make sure I check in with all students. The daily check-in point system is what my cooperating teacher uses to keep track of each student and is something I will carry with me into my own classroom.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Reflection
Student teaching is a rewarding, but stressful experience. Moving from observer to teacher requires making thousands of small decisions a day, spending hours outside of class lesson planning and constantly reflecting on your teaching perfomance so you can improve. It takes about eight weeks to really start to feel comfortable in the new role as the classroom teacher. I was looking forward to shifting my focus from middle school art to elementary school art and fine-tuning my teaching instruction and management skills as I prepared for upcoming job fairs and mock interviews. Coranavirus was on all of our minds, of course, but the reality of the situation did not hit me until I was saying goodbye to students on the Friday before spring break. I was hoping we would come back but I also felt like this could be the last time I would see the students because of how quickly the virus was spreading. During spring break we were notified schools would be closed through May 1st and eventually a decision was made to extend online learning until the end of the school year.
I will not pretend I was not devastated upon hearing this news, as were the other teachers and staff members at the school. But what do educators do? We adapt. My cooperating teachers and I adjusted to the online learning world and right away the district specialist teachers organized a matrix of activities for students to choose from. We quickly learned how to navigate the Schoology platform which allows us to have virtual office hours, a place for students to post their work and art videos and resources for students to look at. At the middle school level we have continued to have optional art classes on Wednesdays where we do small demonstrations and each day we host virtual office hours where students can come and make art. At the elementary level the specials teachers serve more in the Social Emotional Learning role and are assigned students from each class to check-in on. This online learning situation has highlighted existing equity issues in more stark terms. Not all students have access to internet, not all have laptops and while some students have paint and canvases at home, others have nothing. I love art and think it is important, but I also understand that stressed out families worried about jobs and child care may not view making art as the most important thing right now. I love it when students turn in art, but I am also happy to say hello to students and know they are doing okay.
As a learner I am comfortable exploring new technology and new ways of teaching and a benefit of being at home is having time to attend online webinars to find ideas on how to teach virtually. I do think it is possible to overload ourselves and our students with too much information and this is something to be cognizant of now and in the future. I would like to think that this problem will go away in the next school year, but we need to prepare for the fact that we may well be doing online learning in the future. Perhaps schools will have a hybrid schedule that alternates in-class with online instruction. Art teachers may need to adjust their budgets to allow for a small art kit to send home with students who do not have access to art supplies at home. As of now many schools are making the electives classes, such as art and music optional, but in the future I envision attendance and grading requirements being more stringent to hold students accountable for their work. When I design my curriculum and unit plans this summer I will be preparing resources for digital instruction and I will create forms for students to post online assignments as needed. If I can get students familiar with a class web page and the Schoology platform while we do in-class instruction it will make the transition to online learning easier. The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the importance of working with your school teaching teams, the district art teachers, and communicating with families about how to best help out students in these challenging times.
Dispositions Reflection
It is interesting to look back on my student teaching practice in January and compare it to now. Things that once seemed mysterious, like assessment, are more clear to me now and I have the confidence to design my own curriculum. My strongest dispositions are the desire to improve my own performance and collegiality and responsiveness. Charactertistics I have that support those dispositions are that I am flexible, receptive to feedback, and willing to do the work and research to grow my teaching practice. These skills that have served me well throughout my student teaching experience and I will continue to work on them moving forward.
A disposition I wish to improve upon is to be a more effective communicator. I still need to work on paring down my instruction to the essential elements that will benefit the students most and not be ambigous in my instruction. New teachers have a tendency to pack too many things into one lesson and although I have improved on this since my practicum experiences I know it is still something I need to work on. I am trying to balance being professional with being accessible without being too formal or too informal. I know this will get better the longer I am teaching and I will be excited to reflect on these dispositions once again after my first year of teaching . My two main professional goals are to keep a visual reflection journal so I can better keep track of my performance and to attend more professional development on culturally responsive teaching so I can better serve my students. The professional development will enable me to improve my communication skills and keeping a journal will provide me with a place to analyze my teaching practice to document my growth as a teacher as well as weak spots I will need to improve.