Nannying was a very valuable and humbling experience for me. Having some, but not a lot of experience with young children had me coming to a lot of realizations about myself and children as my experience continued. One that particularly sticks out to me is the moment I realized how impactful my actions and words were to these girls. For example, I remember one day where Lyla was having a break down at the park, crying hysterically, yelling, screaming you name it. This was the first major break down I had had to deal with to this point and honestly, I did not know what to do. She was saying mean things and was really getting on my nerves and I began speaking to her in an agitated tone, telling her she was wrong and should not be freaking out. After I realized that getting agitated back at her was only making the situation worse and making her more upset, a light bulb came on in my head. I realized that I was the adult around and she was just a child that does not know how to control or deal with her emotions yet and it was my job to calm her down because she did not yet have the skills to calm herself when she got to this point. Reflecting on this experience I now am more cautious about the intent of my actions when around children because as this experience taught me, our actions and comments have an impact on the children around us even when we may not realize. This experience has helped me in regards to my teaching practice because after reflecting on this experience, I’ll move forward by putting myself in my students’ shoes more often in an attempt to understand their interpretations of my actions and words, to overall improve our classroom relationships and environment.

 

This is Molly, one of the girls I nannied for a year. Reflecting back on this experience I realized she was the one who taught me the most. Before this job, I had very little experience with young children, especially five-year-olds like Molly. At five years old, children do not know a lot about the world or themselves. This proved challenging for me to navigate because at first, I had little patience when it came to explaining almost everything to her. This proved even more difficult because she would not believe half the explanations I gave her anyways. After months of trying to explain to her with words how the world works, I had little progress. Now that I am in the education program I realize why I had such a hard time getting her to believe and trust my understandings of how the world works. In EDTL 3100 I came to the realization that children need to be shown how things work, they need to experience it for themselves in order for the connections to be formed and “learning” to take place. Having this experience with Molly, I now better understand how to educate my future students by allowing them to experience learning instead of me just simply telling information and them taking my word for it as the truth.

This picture is of cohort 1 last semester. Reflecting on both semesters has made me realize how much of a community I feel like I am now apart of. I remember being nervous for days before the first day of the program wondering who I was going to meet and if I was going to find any friends. When you see the same people for every class, every day of the week you get to know them at a rapid pace and really start to feel like you are part of something. Being so close with everyone has improved my learning experience and I really enjoy going to class every day. Reflecting back on this environment now has made me consider my future classrooms and how I can translate how I feel about my learning space into those classrooms. I believe our professors have a huge impact on the tone of the classroom and I attribute a lot of my positive experiences to group work. Continuously working in groups and doing hands-on activities in class has allowed me to feel extremely comfortable with my peers and professors because I am so used to working with everyone on an everyday basis. Moving forward I plan on incorporating a lot of group and hands-on work in my future classrooms to build a classroom community, a space where students want to be.

 

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This is a video from EDSC just a few weeks ago. This particular assignment we all had to present a science activity to the class as we would in a regular elementary classroom. This assignment in particular really highlighted to me (as most of our assignments do) the huge variety in perspective within the class. This assignment had little guidelines and it was very interesting to see the various ways each group interpreted it and decided to present. These varying perspectives are evident in our classes everyday discussion as well. I believe hearing different perspectives from my peers has deepened my learning greatly because they often bring up ideas I would have never thought of. In my future teaching, I plan on incorporating my students’ perspectives into the classroom as much as I can by having student-led class discussions, having flexible assignments and just simply letting the students share their ideas whenever possible.

 

This is my roommate Brooke, she is in her second year of the teaching program at TRU. She has been my biggest support through this program and someone I have really been leaning on to help me through. She has shared her knowledge about how to teach but she has also taught me a lot about myself as a teacher. She often reassures me everything will be okay when I am in times of panic, encourages me in times when she knows I need it and is patient with me as I go through the obstacles she has already conquered. Brooke has taught me a lot about what kind of person I want to be as a teacher, she is the support I want to be for my future students.