Field Blog Post 1

A visit to Mercer Elementary School

 

         

 

On January 30, 2014 my education class went and visited Mercer Elementary School nearby John Carroll University. My first thoughts as my class and I were on are way to the school was I haven't been inside an elementary school classroom since I was a little kid. All kinds of questions were going through my head. I wonder how school has changed for elementary students since I was an elementary student? What are the teachers like now a days? How interactive are the students in the classroom? I was so skeptical about going. As we walked inside the building of the elementary school it was as I was an elementary student again. I felt like a little kid in school, with so many questions about the world and having that innocence we have being a kid experiencing the world without limits. My college professor, Dr. Shutkin, told my class to go on and take a tour of the school and go into the classroom and experience and observe how an elementary classroom is conducted. Now this school was a little different than most schools, it was an International Baccalaureate school. This meant it was class that explored more aspects of the world and learning than most schools. They had a much more hands on, creative, and open curriculum when it came to learning. They had mandarin speaking and Spanish speaking classes, which was the start to its uniqueness. The walls of most, or I think all of the school was work of the students, which spoke great measures of the school. The school teachers embraced the work of the students that put them on the walls for everyone else to see. One of our assignments our teacher was to go into the classroom and observe the basic elementary school and take notes on our experience in the classroom

 

Observations in Mrs. Polantz 3rd grade class:

1. the kids seemed very eager to learn.
2. the classroom was very organized, colorful, and full of work of the students on the walls inside the classroom. It was a fun learning environment to be a part of.
3. the teacher was very interactive with kids asking them all sorts of questions about the subject they were learning at the time.
4. the kids were very attentive every time she asked a question to the students.
5. the kids we observed were able to follow directions well in class.
6. lots of kids were willing to participate in class either by answering the question on the smart board or verbally at the desk with their hands raised. 
7. the kids were not shy at all to say or ask what was on their mind either about a question about the subject they were learning or personal questions to us or the teacher about anything.
8. the teacher seemed patient when things got either a little too loud or hectic and able every time to grab their attention back to their work they were doing in the class.
9. overall, the teacher made it fun and the kids were intrigued to learn.
10. the classroom had a comfortable learning environment and the teacher was a great one in terms of how passionate she was and seeing that she loved teaching kids and helping them succeed to the best of their ability.

This experience at Mercer Elementary school was a good one because of how comfortable and how good of an learning environment it is overall. The staff/faculty seemed to love their job and were passionate about teaching. In the future I hope to maybe do more student teaching their one day in he foreseeable future.