Internship has made me rethink some of the things that I wrote down in my College Knowledge Project. I said that I would likely do something in a technology based field, but now I am thinking that going into education may be the right way for me. I really enjoined getting to know the kids and teaching them about many things. I think that the colleges I put down in my College Knowledge will still be appropriate, but just shifting my major towards education may be in order. I am still not sure if I want to work in education though, I plan to use my internship next year doing something STEM based to see if that is for me.
This is a picture of the tiles that were for sale around seven years ago at this school. These are on display in the hallway for all to see. I have decided to include this picture because I actually have a tile on it, though it is absolutely terrible. Mine is located four tiles to the right of the bottom left corner. The tile one to the left is my brothers. I put these four pictures in a single slideshow because they go together as they are pictures of the classroom. The first picture shows one of the tables, the lego table, the centers wall, and the traditional, elementary school, rainbow rug. The next picture shows the other tables, the kids' cubbies (under the "Reading is Fun" sign), the computers, and the extremely organized teacher section. The third picture shows a wall of the kids' work, all of the "sight words" they have learned throughout the year, and shelf with kids water bottle's and some books. The last picture shows the main wall that the kids look at. It has things that show the days of the week, months of the year, the calendar, the poem of the week, today's date, the equations of the day, a number chart, the time, the sticker charts, and the clip board (I will go more in depth on the sticker chart and the clip board later). I apologize for the bad quality, but this is the picture that I took of myself on career day. This is something that I would like to highlight in the room. Because the school year is almost over for them (they have three days left!) they get to have a fun day everyday. To figure out what they get to do they pop a balloon. All of the kids love this and are extremely excited about doing this. So far they have had movie day, stinky feet day (where they get to take off there shoes in class), bring your favorite book day and stuffed animal day. Here is a better view of the word wall. I also had to take down all of the words on the wall and arrange them into piles, the second picture shows the wall with all of the words off of it. Here is a picture of the clip chart. Each kid has there name on a clip and if they are misbehaving they will have to walk over to it and move there clip down. I realized that this is a very good system because it requires the kid to discipline themselves by physically moving there clip. This is there sicker chart. When a student does something god they get to put a sticker on it. If a student gets the chart filled up they get to eat lunch with their teacher. Here is a book that they made earlier in the year. The cover is a picture of all the kids and their teacher. Each kid has a page where they get to talk about themselves. I have included two sample pages. Here are some examples of work that the kids are doing. The first picture is of a math page they have completed and the second if a of a language arts book that they have to color, read, and recite to two kids.
I thought that my work as an intern was extremely meaningful. I taught many children fundamentals about reading and math. The things that I taught these children are things that they will use for the rest of there lives. One thing that my internship project taught me is that it is much harder to teach children things than I thought. Things like math are easier because there is only one right answer, but language arts is harder. Nevertheless, I learned how to do it with a lot of repetition. My project began as an idea to help improve a girl's writing and the final product is cool to see. I don't have pictures right now, but her writing before is gibberish and after my help she gets a lot better.
A characteristic that I saw in my coworkers that I would like to apply to myself is being more assertive. I have always been the kind of person who is afraid to say no to people and try to please everyone, which is a quality about myself that I have always disliked. I noticed that the teachers tell the kids no or discipline them if the do something bad all the time and the kids don't dislike the teachers anymore for it. I would really like to apply this to my life and become more comfortable with saying "no." Honestly, internship didn't change my view of life after high school very much. Maybe it is because my schedule didn't change very much; I get up at about the same time, I am working/going to school at the same hours, and I am at another school (just teaching instead of learning.) But life seemed fairly the same, you work and then go home, do some work at home, rince and repeat. This is a picture of the tiles that were for sale around seven years ago at this school. These are on display in the hallway for all to see. I have decided to include this picture because I actually have a tile on it, though it is absolutely terrible. Mine is located four tiles to the right of the bottom left corner. The tile one to the left is my brothers. My terrible tile on the tile board. I put these four pictures in a single slideshow because they go together as they are pictures of the classroom. The first picture shows one of the tables, the lego table, the centers wall, and the traditional, elementary school, rainbow rug. The next picture shows the other tables, the kids' cubbies (under the "Reading is Fun" sign), the computers, and the extremely organized teacher section. The third picture shows a wall of the kids' work, all of the "sight words" they have learned throughout the year, and shelf with kids water bottle's and some books. The last picture shows the main wall that the kids look at. It has things that show the days of the week, months of the year, the calendar, the poem of the week, today's date, the equations of the day, a number chart, the time, and the kids sticker charts. The sticker charts show how good a student is; when a student does something good they get a sticker. If they fill up the chart they will get to eat with my mentor during lunch. Where it says "Ms. Huggins Super Stars" is there clips. If a student does something bad they have to move there clip. They reset everyday. I apologize for the bad quality, but this is the picture that I took of myself on career day. This is something that I would like to highlight in the room. Because the school year is almost over for them (they have eight days left!) they get to have a fun day everyday. To figure out what they get to do they pop a balloon. All of the kids love this and are extremely excited about doing this.
Garret Esparza
5-14-18 To be honest, my internship is fairly simple. All I have to do is help 1st graders understand simple things, like grammar and simple math. Because of this I haven't advocated for myself very much in this internship. I also went to this school too, so I am familiar with how things work. The one time I did advocate for myself was during the first couple of days. There was one girl who wanted me to check her writing and see if anything was wrong with it. The writing was complete gibberish and there was something wrong with every sentence. I didn't know how to correct it, because there was so many mistakes, and because I didn't know what she was obligated to correct. I asked my mentor for help and it all worked out. I have been following the "How to be an intern who everyone remembers (for the right reasons)" tips. For the first tip - always be doing something - I think I do a good job of that. When we are doing something where the teacher is presenting to the whole class, I sit in the front and engage with the class. When we are doing something where all the kids are working independently I am always walking around, checking work, and helping. The second note is not really applicable to me because I have not been to an meetings. I do write things down when I am told to do something though. The third tip is also less applicable to me because I really only have one colleague - my mentor - and the rest of the teachers I barely interact with, however I do know all there names because they are the same teachers that were there when I went to the school. I always arrive on time -- I have never been late. I also always dress very professionally. I am one step above everyone else at the school. Garret Esparza
5-22-18 My Internship project is going to be helping a 1st grader named Celeste. Without help, her writing is complete gibberish and impossible to understand. However, she can easily articulate sentences out loud and write all the words separately, but putting the words together is very hard for her. I am going to be helping her improve her writing. Right now I have been asking her what she wants to write about, the specific sentence, and writing yellow lines where all of the words are supposed to go. This has seemed to help and she is even getting better when she writes on her own. The main skill this project will take is patience. I have to be extremely patient while she writes her words slowly and thinks of her sentences. I will need support from my mentor when I need help and I will need support from all of the other kids in the class. They need to bare with Celeste while she is learning and try not to bug me too much while I am counseling with her. Overall, I think that this will be a very cool project. I have her writing from before and I will have it at the end of the semester, so we can (hopefully!) see a clear difference. Garret Esparza
5-18-18 I asked my mentor the following questions: Why did you choose to become a teacher? My parents were both teachers so that was all I knew! It was the way I grew up! I used to help in my mom's first grade classroom. Why at McAuliffe? I taught in Reno for 3 years and then in Encinitas for 3 years. I wanted to teach in Oceanside because I owned a home in Oceanside and my husband worked for the Oceanside School district. When I interviewed, this is where I was placed! Do you keep in touch with your past students? Yes, I do keep in touch with many past students and their families. Do you have any advice about teaching, college, or life outside of high school? Teaching is the best job around! I love the kids and being able to move around during the day. I could never have the type of job that required me to sit at a desk! I highly recommend you go to college...it is such a learning experience, not just academically, but about life. Originally I wanted to travel right out of high school and put college off. My parents really wanted me to go to college, so I did. They sent me to Europe during the summer after my junior year of college in return for going straight to college. To this day, I travel whenever I can and the teaching schedule allows for a lot of traveling! What skills are necessary to be a 1st grade teacher? Classroom management is VERY important! This is the toughest thing for most new teachers to learn. I tend to run a very structured classroom and I would say classroom management is a strength of mine. You also need to be very patient...especially with the parents of your students! First Impressions From Day One
Garret Esparza 5-16-18 My first day of internship had a rocky start. I was up until 3:00 am the previous night because some spawn-of-Satan bird was squawking all night. Despite getting less than four hours of sleep, my first day was great. The workplace is great. I decided to go back to my old elementary school for my internship and everything was so nostalgic. They have a routine that they do everyday and I remembered so much of it. The school is also so much smaller than I remember. I remember big long halls, the gigantic lunch area, and the huge classrooms, while in reality everything was extremely small. My colleagues are all extremely nice. Because I am working at an elementary school, I am mainly working with my mentor Luey Huggins. I also frequently interact with the other three first grade teachers. They are all so nice. Because I live close to where I am interning, I decided to walk home and all of the first grade teachers have offered to drive me home. I don't know too much about the job that I am doing right now because I am mainly observing. Once I get down the routine I think that I will help with more things around the class than I am doing now. Right now the main thing that I do is walk around the room when the students are doing individual work and correct/check off there work. The kind of work that they are doing is very simple math (addition/subtraction), grammar (learning about rhyming words and what contractions, prefixes, suffixes and compound words are), and writing/reading (they write stories about what they did/are going to do today, everyday and they read very simple first grade books, mainly about animals.) I feel mostly settled into the class. All of the kids know my name (and I know most of there names) and call on me frequently for help. I am excited to get to know the kids better and learn everything about them. I am also nervous and excited for when I get to teach them something. I think if I teach them something already created by my mentor it will be easy, because it is almost guaranteed to work. But if I have to create the lesson by myself I think it will be very challenging to find something that teaches the students, but a great learning experience. I am worried about my project and what I am going to do for that as I do not know at the moment. However, i'm sure that I will think of something! Internship Expectations5/2/18
Garret Esparza 11th Grade Internship Yesterday I participated in 11th grade Career Day, where you go to your Internship site and get a small glimpse of what that career is like and what your Internship will be like. My mentor is a 1st grade teacher at Christa McAuliffe Elementary School, which is also the elementary school I attended ten years ago. The day went like this: my mentor did the things that she does with the kids every morning, things like pick a class helper, read out the date, time, sing some songs (about days of the week, months of the year, and insects), go over a simple math equation, and count the days of school. The kids then went to P.E. where stations were set up with tasks such as running, jump rope, gaga-ball, handball, tetherball, swings, climbing, ect. They then went back inside and set up different centers around the classroom where each center did a different Language Arts assignment. Next was lunch, but after that they did a math version of centers. During both of the times where they were doing centers I was floating around the room checking off the kids work and helping them if a problem was wrong. The assignments were simple, for language arts they were writing sentences and coloring, and for math they were doing basic addition and subtraction. However, I found that it was a lot harder to help the kids -- especially with math -- because these are the kinds of things that you learn how to do in your head and don’t think about at all. After math centers, the kids learned a little about four different types of animal groups: mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and birds. It was then time to go. Some work policies I noticed my internship location to have were a want not to leave anyone behind. At the beginning of the day my mentor went over the homework from the night before because some kids were confused with it. They also believe in helping the kids see the answer and not telling them the answer, with sounding out words and using simple math techniques to make the kids see if the answer is wrong or right. It will be challenging for me to help the kids see the answer without telling them, but I will centernly get better in time. Policies like absence and tardiness are obviously not allowed (without a valid excuse) because the job involves teaching kids who are not old enough to do work without a teacher's guidance. I noticed that all of the staff was dressed fairly casually, and I think as long as your attire is not inappropriate for kids you can wear anything you want. For me, I want to look a step above everyone else, so I will dress in collared shirts and nice pants. Overall, my career day experience was very nostalgic. This is the elementary school that I went to and the teacher I had when I was in 1st grade and there are so many things that I remember doing. It was good to be back. I think that the professional work there will be challenging, as I have to teach kids in a way that they can understand. However, I also expect this internship to be rewarding as I am helping kids understand things that they will use for the rest of their lives. |