Student Teaching Experience Reflection
What went well? What did you learn? What would you do differently?
I learned so much in eight weeks at Beattie Elementary! It was such an amazing experience because I gained confidence as an art teacher and I realized that I could definitely teach elementary art and love it in the future sometime. I didn't know if I would have the energy or the passion for it, but I realized that I do and that makes me excited. I discovered how fresh my ideas are in elementary because you are constantly ideating and coming up with lessons for your students, and it rubs off on them too. I loved the cycle of the classes because you always got to start something new every day at least once. I learned that that really kept my teaching fresh and much more interesting. The concepts of process and choice were also two big concepts that I will coming away with. Basing artworks on process if so important, but I realized that there is definitely rebuttal from parents and even other art teachers sometimes. It is sometimes tough I think to teach a lot of process based work because sometimes the product isn't the prettiest, but it is so important. If I ever have my own classroom I will try and educate the staff and parents as much as I can so they understand how to talk to their children about their work and why it looks the way it does. Looking back on my semester I would incorporate more choice based work. I did a lot of station work with the littler kids and they were very engaged, but I think it would be interesting to give the little kids more choice. In the future I also would have observed other homeroom teachers more to see the students in a different light and setting. I think it would have helped me learn their names faster as well.