Katie Overfield - Internship Pros & Cons

Throughout the internship year, I expect lots of dilemmas to arise, small and large.  Like Tracie, determining differentiation seems like it would bring the most dilemmas with developing lessons and assessing students.  Since I am placed in a first and second grade multiage classroom, I have to create lessons that adjust to every level of first and second grade students.  I also am expecting, and have already seen, dilemmas to show in my teacher-student relationships.  Since I am out of the class once a week and Jayno Adams Elementary is used to having interns in the building, most of the students tend to view us as “not quite teachers”.  They see me as an authority figure, but still tend to act up more with just me around than with my MT’s and sometimes only will ask them questions instead of me.  To reduce these dilemmas, I have a goal to bond more with the students to develop a mutual respect and understanding of the classroom situation.  One of my dilemmas that I was anticipating to occur, but have now seen that it will not be one is the aspect of creating and assessing students.  Since we have a multiage classroom will two teachers already, collaboration is used in planning every lesson and every assessment. 

In terms of confidence, I feel fairly confident in my ability to plan, teach, and assess literacy concepts.  I feel confident in my teaching ability in this area, especially in regards to instruction based on mentor texts.  I have already done several read alouds in my class and have had great responses from the students in terms of classroom management.  I also feel pretty confident in the planning aspect of literacy since I have had the most experience with it and the collaboration of my MT’s is immense.  Like I stated above, collaboration is important and used in every lesson for our class.  I would like to learn more about appropriate and effective assessments for each unit.  Working with my MT will make me more comfortable with creating my own assessments that I know will effectively tell us as teachers what and how the students have learn. 

This year is full of opportunities for learning for me as a developing teacher.  The collaboration aspect in itself is an immense learning opportunity for me as an educator because collaboration with co-workers is such an important skill to have.  The multiage class also allows me the opportunity to learn two grade levels of behavior issues and curriculum requirements.  With this opportunity to learn also comes an opportunity to finesse my lesson plans.  In the article by Kersten and Pardo, it explains that new teachers like to look at the curriculum and maneuver it to fit their preferred teaching styles until they are comfortable in their teaching ability.  I feel that this type of finessing will also be my strategy for the internship year.