Time to GUSH about my first internship day in a school! I have nothing but positive vibes after my first (almost) full day interning at my placement school. I say 'almost' because for the first part of the day we had to meet the principal. No, the principal was not scary. I could tell he really cared about his school community. One lesson I will carry with me from his conversation with us was to focus on the positive. It seems so simple, but it was an 'aha' moment for me. For example, if a student displays a behaviour that you don't really want to see, like pushing another student, you don't focus on the negative action, you redirect towards positive expectations. You might ask, "How do we show respectful behaviour? By keeping our hands to ourselves".
And to think! All that time I spent worrying about ALL those hypothetical things that could have gone wrong. The day was a breeze! Time FLEW by! That is how I know I'm on the right career path. Being in the classroom didn't feel like work! I'm sure there will be aspects of the job that I don't enjoy, like marking papers, but all the hard work will be worth it a thousand times over because of that spark, that joy, that energy that I got from working in the classroom helping students learn.
Now, I did assign myself homework after my first day. I've decided that to truly assimilate what I will learn from my time in the classroom I am going to start a teaching journal. Yes Cohort D teachers, I'm going to be Self-Reflective! Online of course, I am in the Ed Tech cohort after all! I really like the layout of the site Penzu. By recording activities, thoughts, feelings, etc. it will help me reflect on my own teaching style- what works, what doesn't work, and will help me grow as an educator. My goal (and I'm writing it here for the world to see) is to journal after every day I spend in the classroom. It might be a lot of work, but a lot of things happen in one day and I want to make sure I think about all of what I experienced so I can get the most out of these jam-packed eight months.
On days when you are too busy to create a blog post about your classroom experience, you may want to consider posting a picture instead. It is quick and easy and yet can still capture your memories.
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