My Greatest Challenge

Interns: You've been in your internship classroom since late August, assisting your Classroom Teacher in launching the school year. For your first blog post describe, briefly, one strong conviction about teaching that you brought to the classroom that has changed considerably during this time. What changed, and why is this a sign of personal growth?

In response to Karen's post, my greatest challenge in taking a new perspective upon arriving in my internship has been with values, rules and procedures. I once held that the classroom set up could make or break a class learning environment. While the open meeting rug area, strategic placement of the weekly poem, easel, calendar, and the reading chair aid in creating a place for learning to happen, the set up still needs the crucial human element to bring it all to life.

Values, rules, and procedures code the physical arrangement of our class and it is with these explicitly stated, modeled, and monitored ways acting and believing that students begin to discover learning happening for them. The children seem to pick up on our value for a fair procedure of getting up to stand in line and seek to find fairness in their disputes about markers. They thrive in a work atmosphere that is protected from harmful comments by rules that tell them to be kind and listen to each other. I am seeing myself as the crucial human element to a classroom more and more each week.

My next challenge is to explore the layer of academics and how children grow academically as the year progresses. I hope to continue to see change and growth in my role and understanding of the important social development that occurs in the class supporting the academic development.