Fieldwork: The best learning experience!

Fieldwork is a necessary part of becoming an educator. It is often one of my favorite parts of any class. We get to become hands-on with the students and personalize lessons to their needs and our preferences. Being the first group to teach our unit plan for fieldwork, I have some feelings, thoughts and comments about the experience.

Fieldwork began with creating a unit plan suitable for the SS content of a range of students. The students we have never met nor had limited knowledge on their academic abilities. The students ranged from grade five through seventh. As being the first group to present our unit plans, we (Chris, Joe and myself) of course were the "guinea pigs" for the class! About a week and a half before our fieldwork date, we began to brainstorm ideas for our unit plan. What should we do it on? Whats our main focus? Are we comfortable with that topic? How do we make it into three different lessons that flow and coincide? These were some questions we faced when coming up with our topic. And the final result...we chose to focus on the development of the American Constitution in relation to the Revolutionary War. Okay, so we had a topic planned. That was the easiest part. Then came the lesson plan creating. STRESSFUL. COFFEE. NO SLEEP. Lesson planning was extremely stressful and time consuming, BUT extremely worthwhile after it was all done. 

Unit planning with a group of three required a lot of work and cooperation. Each group member has their own ideas, but working together cooperatively and efficiently proved to be a valuable lesson. We had a "idea/direction" for our unit plan, but once we began to write up the first lesson we realized that our original ideas would be molded into something very different from our planned direction; which is okay! This was a learning experience and we learned early on that not everything goes as planned. We met as a group several times at our homes, school and via Google drive. Google drive, which was new to me, was extremely helpful and I will definitely utilize it in the future. We decided to type up one lesson plan each. I was given the inquiry lesson plan to type up. Of course, we all agreed on what each lesson would entail, because we would be teaching the lesson essentially together, but each of us typed up one. Then on Google drive, the entire group could easily access and edit the lesson plans. Dr. Smirnova was able to go through each lesson plan in fine detail while group chatting with us about it. I learned a lot just from creating the lesson plans.

The unit plan included three lessons: direct instruction, inquiry and cooperative. I was used to direct instruction and cooperative lessons due to my prior education classes, but inquiry was newer to me. I have had other professors tell me to never use inquiry because according to research, it doesn't work. After reading about inquiry, I found that it was similar to the scientific method and experiments conducted in Science class. I also found this video which nicely outlines how to conduct an inquiry lesson. After becoming familiar with inquiry, I was able to successfully create the inquiry lesson for the unit plan. 

Now to teaching our lesson. NERVOUS! I was super nervous for fieldwork. I have subbed for over a year now and I am never nervous when entering a classroom and I have rarely been nervous conducting fieldwork for my other education classes. This fieldwork was different and made me nervous because: I have never met the students, the students consisted of three different grade levels, my entire class was observing me, Dr. Smirnova was observing me, Dr. Smirnova's educational psychology class was observing me, the teacher of the school was observing me and I had a camera video-taping me! Talk about being watched...we were definitely being critiqued! Once the lesson began and I became more comfortable with the audience, the students and myself, I loved it. 

After the lesson was done and the students left, it was time to reflect and discuss our unit plan. I already had a list of things in my head that I was aware of and wished I had done better. Each of our group members went around and reflected on the experience. Then my class peers and Dr. Smirnova explained their thoughts and comments. I really enjoyed this reflection part of the class because I got to hear how others viewed our unit and receive beneficial feedback. I felt very supported by the class and Dr. Smirnova. I learned a lot about what to do next time when I teach. 

I learned to use professional language...NO "GUYS". This will be a hard habit to shake, but being aware and trying to become more professional is a part of learning. I also learned where we needed to add parts in our lesson plans. Stronger introductions, transitions and questions are some things my group needed in our plans. I also learned, along with my fellow group members, that time management is essential. We ran out of time for several of our activities and we tried our best to continue to have the lesson flow with the limited time. 

Overall, I really enjoyed the entire fieldwork experience. Though it was extremely time consuming and stressful, it was one of the most memorable, worthwhile, and beneficial experiences I have had as a future teacher. I learned more than I have ever learned from any textbook or teacher lecture from the fieldwork. I will strive to use the recommendations from my peers and Dr. Smirnova as I continue to work on my unit plan final project and to be a great teacher for my future students!

xox,

Christie