Fairview Reflection

LAE 4860

October 14, 2007

Fairview Reflection

Throughout the completion of my field experience at Fairview Middle School, I was presented with a slew of setbacks that might have cheapened the experience had I let them. However, I was also granted a rare experience to work with intelligent, eager students on a project, using a program they had never encountered before. I would not hesitate to say that the benefits greatly outweighed the drawbacks in this experience.
One of the possible hindrances surrounding my field experience was the fact that the time I was scheduled to go to the school nearly overlapped with one of my college classes. However, another student from my technology class was kind enough to pick me up from campus every morning and drop me off outside of my classroom building so that I was never more than five minutes late to class. This display of generosity on the part of my peer taught me how important it is to build strong relationships with your colleagues. I hope to develop a mutual respect and understanding with my fellow teachers, so that if ever one was to need a favor, they could come to me for help, and I could do the same towards them. It is impractical to believe that one cannot gain from the support and aid of others, and I was made aware of this fact, once again, throughout my Fairview experience.
Another unforeseen obstacle was the reduction of the number of days we could attend the school from three to two. This limited the time we had to work with the students on learning the ins and outs of the program, Windows Movie Maker, and the amount of slides they were able to include on their projects. However, this also could be seen as an advantage in the end. As a teacher, I will surely battle time in an effort to provide my students with the most possible information in the shortest amount of time. Every former and current teacher I have spoken to has always stressed that in order to be successful in the profession, you must be flexible. This field experience was a great exercise in practicing that quality.
It was also incredibly eye-opening to see the amount of technology available to the students. Alongside this, I was also surprised by their amount of background experience with computers. I was lucky enough to come from a background where I have always had access to computers both in and out of the home. My schools were always stocked with the latest technology from computers to projectors to film equipment. Not until college did I begin to realize that everyone around me did not come from a similar background. Still, it was shocking to see students having to share floppy discs in order to save their pictures. This was very good, though, because I may be working in a school one day that has similar resources and I must be ready to adapt and make the most of what I am given. Also, I must be prepared to work with children that have never encountered some of the technology before and I must give them the background knowledge they need to succeed in the assignment. I thought we did a good job with this challenge given the total time that we had in the classroom.
All things considered, this was an educational and constructive endeavor. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the students, and I feel that I probably learned more from the experience than the children I was working with. There is no doubt that I will be able to draw upon the lessons I learned from this assignment when I am teaching in the future, both when working with Windows Movie Maker and in other daily activities.