Katelyn Price Dr.

Hicks Education 323 15 November 2012 Field Experience Reflection I have grown professionally as a result of this field experience because of the wonderful mentor teacher I had the opportunity of working with. Mrs. Bryan has a lot of experience as a middle school teacher and she is a pleasure to be around. She showed me how to teach social studies and make it interesting for middle school students. Her classroom management style allows the students to make their own decisions while giving them a set of rules to outline how they should behave. A lot of the things I saw in her classroom I will be using in my own classroom one day. My first day in Mrs. Bryans classroom I walked in and the students were quietly working in their workbooks. Each class follows the same schedule, the first 15 minutes of class they do their Daily Starter which is normally a question that requires them to reflect on what they learned the previous day. Their daily starter has to be 11 lines long in order for them to get credit for it. This allows the students to practice doing short answer responses. After the students do their daily starter she will call on a few of them to read their response out loud. Once that is done she begins introducing new material. When she introduces new material she uses a combination of Power Point presentation and their workbooks. They have weekly quizzes and every two weeks they do a common assessment. I like the common assessment because all the seventh grade social studies teachers have to get together and make the test as a team. All of these methods were new

to me I had never seen Social Studies taught like this. Normally a social studies class is a bunch of note-taking and lecturing. Mrs. Bryan uses a series of activities and the textbook to teach her class. Middle school years are supposed to be the hardest years for a student because of the development that takes place during that time. All of that plays a role in their behavior in the classroom. I have witnessed two types of middle school classroom management styles, some teachers believe in yelling constantly and being overly strict, while other teachers believe in helping the students develop and allowing them to make choices. Every middle school classroom in Orangeburg District Five have the same set of basic classroom rules. These basic rules are things like be on time and prepared for class, be respectful and things of that nature. They have to visible in every classroom. Mrs. Bryan refers to that in her classroom and the students follow it very well. If she has any problems out of her students she does not hesitate to call home. One day in particular a young lady refused to do her work; Mrs. Bryan went to the phone and called her mother right then and there. After the young lady got off the phone with her mom she had a completely different attitude. I never witnessed Mrs. Bryan yelling at the students and I never saw the students completely out of control. It was evident that they had a classroom understanding of how they should behave and it worked very well for them. The students know what is expected of them, they make the decision whether to act accordingly or not. Mrs. Bryans class is probably one of my favorite classes that I have observed during my matriculation at Claflin University. She has so much wisdom and experience that have contributed to her being an excellent teacher. I could only grow from being

around such a positive and effective teacher. I hope that next year when I begin teaching in my own classroom that I am just as positive and effective.