Joanna Munoz

June, 17, 2014

Teaching at Northwest Reflection

Today it was my groups turn to go teach at Northwest. I was paired up with Miss Young and I taught a 6th grade english class. When I arrived at Northwest I was nervous but I felt confident at the same time. We entered the building and then right away Mrs. Cooper dropped us off with our teacher and right away we got to work. Right when I got there, the students were about to start reading the class book. I introduced myself to the students and then we began reading the book that the students were going to read during summer school. The book i read to them was called “The Gun”. The book dealt with bullying and peer pressure, the topic of the day was also peer pressure. The student and I read chapter two of the book and we had a class discussion. I asked the student questions about the book, what they think will happen later on in the story and what they would do if they were stuck in a situation like the one that Tyray was dealing with. After the discussion the student had to fill out a worksheet where they would look for certain words, phrases or paragraphs that stood out to them. The students had to write why it stood out to them and why they think that the author wrote that certain word or sentence in a certain way. I didn’t know how to do the worksheet myself, when I went to go plan my lesson with Miss Young she never mentioned the worksheet to me. So i was teaching the students how to complete the worksheet but at the same time I was also teaching myself. Miss Young was surprised at how well I went with the flow and sort of learned how to complete the worksheet as I went along.  After we completed the worksheet, the students had a fifteen minute break down stairs in the cafeteria. During that fifteen minute break I went downstairs to the library to talk to Mrs. Cooper about how my experience was going so far. While I down there talking to Mrs. Cooper I really just sat down and thought about what I saw in the classroom. There are kids there that just don’t want to be at school period. I noticed that Northwest is a hard middle school to work out. There are many students dealing many problems and they don’t receive the attention they deserve. I was really grateful to be paired up with Miss Young. She works hard to have a connection with her students and she really pushes them to be successful, that is what makes her a great teacher. After the fifteen minutes break the students came back and they were about to start their ABC novel project. To do the ABC Novel Project the students were given twenty six flashcards, one for each letter of the alphabet. For each letter they would find a word that starts with that certain letter. Then, they would write in the back of their flashcard why that word is significant to the book. While they were still working on their project it was time for me to leave. It was a really nice experience teaching at Northwest, mainly because I myself want to become a high school teacher or a middle school teacher. This experience really helped me realize that teaching secondary education is something I really want to do.