Introduction to the Teaching Profession – Dr. Patricia Hastings
This was a class I had been looking forward to since I had gotten to Longwood. When I was changing my major multiple times freshman year, I kept the education part steady throughout the different majors. Even though I stayed with it, I had no clue if I actually wanted to go into education after college. This class helped make that final decision for me.
The information learned in this class was valuable for going into the classroom. We didn’t just learn how to teach, but how to best benefit the students within the classroom through the curriculum given to us. We learned about differentiation, the injustices of the education system and funding, and the most important was dealing with social injustices within the classroom. I felt prepared to at least start interactions in the classroom with the information learned in the class.
This also started my first practicum placement for the education track. I was placed with a math teacher at Amelia County Middle School in Amelia, Virginia. My cooperating teacher, Mr. Balducci, taught Math 6, Math 7, and Pre-Algebra, and he was even working on achieving his masters in educational leadership in hopes to become a principal in Amelia County. I was in his class with another girl in my class, so some days we were working with just him and others the three of us were tackling the COVID classroom.
Amelia County was hybrid and very small, so we would only have about anywhere from three to five students in the classroom at a time. Even though it was sad that I only got to meet half the students due to the hybrid schedule, it was great for experience to work with such a small group of kids and have the close interactions needed to go further into my practicums.
One struggle I really faced was the classwork. I went through a lot of family stuff in the fall semester which caused me to go home frequently and fall behind in all my classes, but very behind in this class. I was close to failing the class and had to have frequent meetings with the professor, Dr. Hastings, in order to figure out what I needed to do to make sure I kept up with the class. Dr. H truly worked with me, listened to me when I needed to talk to her about anything going on in my life, and did a wonderful job on finding coursework that helped us with all the information.
My artifact from the class is my Practicum Journal I completed while going through my practicum in Amelia. It has artifacts of my teaching time, descriptions of my days, and an overall reflection of my experience within the school.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1kV0ouFXmLgpRQycQ5f2c5aHapKKm4OhoFyIjGvblaYE/edit?usp=sharing