Practicum II Documentary

Practicum II Documentary

Practicum II - 9/22/2025

The students have been behaving roughly the same. The first class had shown the effects of waking up to a Monday morning. Students were visibly more tired than I've seen them on a Wednesday. Miss N gave me a few more pointers on student behavior. Some students don't have a good home environment. So when they come back after a weekend, they can be more emotional than a typical day at school. 

Between class times, she also mentioned what to avoid regarding political subjects. She mentioned that some students will repeat what they hear or see without knowing the meaning or controversy. Students are offered to go to the guidance room to speak about politics. Whether it is to understand more or to have some feelings out in a more appropriate environment. It is also discouraged to assume the staff members' politics or share leaning political beliefs on social media. I understood, but explained that I wouldn't talk about politics in general. I explained that it is too polarizing [for some to accept different beliefs] and the subjects get too touchy.

It's not to avoid issues, but to avoid division with co-workers. With how both parties feel on different subjects, it is hard to find common ground. She brought up examples of how teachers got fired based on social media comments, including more recently, posting negative comments against Charlie Kirk and his assassination. I heard about many cases of people getting fired because of this. I'm disappointed that people would make any insensitive posts. I appreciate her concern for the issues and that she took the time to make sure that I knew how to be a teacher to create a healthy, politically-neutral environment.

We had an outdoor project in a 5th grade group where students had to get contact paper and find leaves/things to stick to it. Then, they had to stick contact paper on the other side to seal the project. Some students had trouble with the contact paper, so I made sure to show the student one-on-one how to do it, and let him or her do the rest.

On Mondays, the second half of the school day is library time instead of art time. Miss N. had the students circle around her and listen to her read. Afterward, students picked their own book to read. I started to read a reptile book for a boy in the class, but class ended. I told him that I hope he liked the book. He wanted Miss N. to read the book, but she was busy checking out books, so she offered that I could. I was happy to help read the book. It was a picture book so he was pointing out reptiles. I agreed, "Yeah." and "That's right" to applaud his knowledge. It was exciting to see how interested he was in reptiles.

Time frame: 7:20 am to 3:30 pm

Practicum II - 9/17/2025

Today, Miss N had assignments revolved around Hispanic Heritage Month. She showed me in advance what she planned on teaching her classes. She also explained key words to search or not search to avoid reinforcing stereotypes. She had projects such as Mexican themed mirrors (with tin foil and paper plates), coloring papers of monuments and temples, as well as thin, colorful, cut out decorations. I can't remember the name of those decorations at the moment. It was named something in Spanish. One of the students called them snowflakes. I thought it was a fair observation to make, given how they're made with similar techniques and material. Some of the classes with boy groups were less mellow than last Wednesday. I had to remind them a few times to sit down and not bother each other. They would listen at first, but go back to distracting each other and the class afterward. Miss N keeps reminding them to focus and allow other students to do their projects. She even separates them, but either one walks to the other's table, or they talk across the class. It's been a power struggle to get the students to act appropriately. Whenever they did something good like clean up or begin their projects, I made sure to say "Good job", "There you go", or "Thank you" to encourage it more. I made sure to remain available and actively check to see it they're doing to the right thing.

Students have been good with asking for help. There have been student who needed to glue and roll the paper decoration. I also had to help space the squares apart, if there's not enough room for three. Some students had trouble cutting or knowing how to cut scissors. For one student, I had to give a smaller pair of scissors to allow better grip. For another, I gave her a different pair because her scissors aren't cutting well. I ended up helping with other small things like giving ideas for colors and patterns for the mirrors. there was also a student who was struggling with using Canva's AI prompt (which was being used for references to draw (not trace) to avoid copyright). It gave him errors saying what he searched for was not allowed. He said that he tried typing "A monkey" and "A tree". I assumed that this could be a "false error" and that he should try typing a more specific prompt. I typed "A monkey in a tree" and it worked.

Despite needing to monitor students more carefully than my first day, today still had many successes.

At the end of the day, she also showed me a project that she wanted to do with Pre-K. She showed a reading book with graphics of mice painting themselves in primary colors. It teaches kids about secondary colors in a fun way. To allow kids to paint without creating messes, she squirted blobs of red, yellow, and blue paint on a hard paper, then placed it in a Ziploc bag. How it would work is they will push the paint by using their fingers, and they could mix the colors without direct contact.

Time frame: 7:20 am to 3:30 pm

Practicum II - 9/10/2025

I had a terrific start to my first day. As soon as I arrived as I entered, I met my Cooperating Teacher at the front entrance, who was not far behind. I shared my thoughts about teaching, when she asked. I explained that in my experience at MVU, I felt that the students were already set on what they were doing. Whereas in the Elementary school, I'm expecting that students will always need help, and they're going to see new things. I want a class that's busy (on my end) and have students that are excited to do projects/median that they've never done before. My Cooperating Teacher, Miss N, has been very informative about how Wednesdays typically go. She explained her process making assignments and grading for every tri-semester. She has also informed of the students with troubled backgrounds or needs extra monitoring. It helped me stay alert, but be empathetic if things arise. The students were welcoming and excited to get to know me. They were comfortable enough with showing me their work or progress. There has been some students that needed reminders to focus on the speaker (Miss N), but the environment was easy to control once the issue has been addressed. 

There was a few students that needed help to get started. In one block the assignment was to draw a trout step-by-step. There was a student at the long-side of the table who couldn't see the smartboard. He couldn't move his spot, because all other spots at the front table were taken. What I did to solve the issue was sat in the chair next to him (it was not a better spot, but I could lean back to view the board), and I showed him what to do. There was some struggle in the beginning. He joked that he couldn't do it. I lightly traced individual lines, and told him to draw over it. Eventually, he did the parts on his own. He was good with taking feedback whenever I thought he could redo a line. After that, he was all caught up with the rest of the class. In another block, we were doing freestyle pointillism. Some students were a bit overwhelmed by the idea of tapping multiple dots to produce an image. One student resorted to making a zig-zag scribble. I told him that it looked like a tornado. I suggested it would be cool to make a spaghetti tornado with meatballs. He liked the idea, and he used the colors I gave him to produce the piece. Unfortunately, he didn't have enough time, so he made a lots dots with this colors. However, I told him that it looked nice and it looked like Fall. Not all projects are going to be successful, but I want students to leave the classroom with passion to try again and create something special. That will be the fuel that ignites students to keep moving forward.

Time frame: 7:20 am to 2:50 pm