Experience in the Field

In the Aves Compartidas program, I worked primarily with 3rd-grade students at River Road Elementary School. With my classmate Jayda Roberts, I facilitated lesson plans in one classroom and helped support and observe two other classrooms led by other team members in the 3rd-grade, making it approximately 70 students we reached each week. In addition to the indoor classroom lessons, I also facilitated three field trips out at Mount Pisgah Arboretum for groups of 10-11 students from the 3rd, 4th, and 5th-grade. Throughout these lessons, I gained experience and insight into my teaching style that have helped me grow as an educator. 

The main themes that surfaced for me in my teaching reflections were my confidence in the classroom, time management, and the integration of Spanish vocabulary. At the beginning of my teaching experience in Aves Compartidas, I remember that I struggled with my confidence in leading the classroom and found it hard to ground myself in my teaching. This led to me forget important parts of the lesson and activities got rushed due to poor time management on my behalf. As we only had 45-minutes to facilitate lesson plans in the indoor classroom, I learned the importance of studying the lesson plan beforehand and making notes for myself on what I wanted students to get out of the lesson. Another aspect I worked on through reflecting on my teaching was the inclusion of Spanish vocabulary. As I had three students in my class that were native Spanish speakers with little English understanding, it was my priority to include them in learning the content as well as I could. With my further incorporation of Spanish vocabulary into the lessons, I saw engagement rise with all students which reinforced my dedication in this area of my teaching. 

Overall, the teaching experience I have gained in the Aves Compartidas program has helped me understand what I want to prioritize in my teaching: cultivating student engagement and leading with purpose. 

Within my evaluations from peers and mentors, Dr. Kathryn Lynch and Samantha Stroud, some topics that were mentioned were my redirection of false answers, my pacing of activities, and questioning skills. Within my classroom facilitation, there were many answers that were close to being correct with some inaccuracies which I corrected when repeating the answer back to the student. I found this important to do as some topics are misconstrued in teaching and need revisiting after the lesson is over. In addition to this, my pacing of activities was often commented on such as when I conducted material hand-outs at the wrong time, causing distractions, or when there was too much time given to one activity over the other. After being given this feedback by both my mentors and my classmates, I paid more attention in my lesson plan review to when I would conduct this material handout for activities and what priorities I would give some activities over others if cuts needed to happen due to time constraints. 

The teacher for the 3rd grade classroom I facilitated, Ms. Erin Piper, noted how I did well in my linking back to current classroom topics and overall classroom engagement while also noting how I could do better in my Spanish vocabulary incorporation. With this feedback, I took more care in practicing my vocabulary for upcoming lesson plans and writing down what I wanted to say in Spanish ahead of time to reference in the classroom. 

Our other community partner in this project at Mt. Pisgah Arboretum, Sara Spoden, gave some feedback on the structuring of the Aves Compartidas field trips we conducted there. She noted how the team could improve the facilitation of lunch time and recess in having a larger game rather than free play that could get out-of-hand fast.