Field Experience in the Education World
I decided that I wanted to become a teacher before my freshman year of college started, as my summer was coming to an end. Prior to this, I had been set on majoring in Hospitality Management with hopes to become an event planner, however, it wasn’t until this past summer that I learned that I was not truly excited about that specific career choice; I wanted to do something I was passionate about. I suddenly had a realization that being a teacher was not only something I was passionate about but something I ultimately had a dream for. Children have always been the type of people I like to be around and I realized that I had a desire to help kids learn and understand. It became clear to me that being an elementary school teacher was something I wanted greatly. Before arriving for my first fall semester, I began to research the requirements I would have to meet to become a teacher. Each major in college has different prerequisite courses as well as miscellaneous requirements such as service hours, internships, or certain tests. I wanted to know what I would need to accomplish to achieve my end goal.
I was naïve to think that the path to earning a degree in Elementary Education would be relatively easy. How difficult could it be to learn how to teach young children? As it turns out, it is a bit more strenuous than one might assume. There is a good amount of work involved in the rudimentary courses but this work actually happens mostly outside of the college classroom. A lot of the education classes require that the student gets field experience in an actual classroom. This requirement by itself is not very surprising, in fact, most college majors require students to get out into the field before they earn their degree and graduate. I thought it was especially interesting however, how quickly the College of Education wants their students to acquire classroom experience. One of the first classes any education major must take is “Introduction to Education” and this class requires field experience. In this way, the education program gets their students involved in the classroom before the student even starts most of their main classes. This conveys how important field experience is, especially for students wanting to become teachers.
According to the Florida State University’s mission statement on their website, the Elementary Education program offers “extensive field experience with students of different backgrounds and grade levels” as well as “course work grounded in research based, ‘best practices’ that prepare you to be a leader in (the) field and community.” It is incredibly obvious that field experience plays a very important role in the process of becoming a teacher, and most people would agree with that. One educator states that “the desirability of direct contact with schools and children by prospective teachers before they engage in student teaching is generally recognized today” (Goodlad) Classroom field experience can only benefit students who want to be in the classroom because they get to see what the real-world classroom looks like. It is also important because it gives students a chance to work with children and begin to understand how to teach effectively as well as how to properly interact with students and other teachers.
It could also be argued that classroom field experience is almost, if not more, important than actual classes. It is imperative that students get that “hands on” learning experience, where they can observe a classroom and a teacher in action. Rachel Lootens is a first year, third-grade teacher at Kate Sullivan Elementary School, here in Tallahassee. When I asked her about what she believes has prepared her the most for being a teacher during her time at Florida State University she said that “classroom field experience is definitely more important than classes and tests.” She went on to say that “the classes (she) took gave her the background knowledge (she) needed to do well in the classroom but most of what (she) learned and applies in her classroom today came from the experiences (she) had from being in the field.” Rachel Lootens is a teacher who is fresh out of college and who is getting to see firsthand how her time at college is impacting and helping her career. She also stated that “one of the most difficult but beneficial things she did was co-teach while she was still in school.” She had to learn how to make lessons plans as well as prepare and teach those lessons plans, all while balancing her own school life. When Rachel Lootens co-taught, she got a lot of critical classroom experience and even though it was hard, it was still useful.
A pre-service teacher is described simply as “a college student involved in a school-based field experience.” (Virginia Wesleyan College) However, field experience can play out in a multitude of ways. It can take the form of observing, volunteering, co-teaching, tutoring, and much more. One of the most basic ways of obtaining field experience is through observing. This is how most field experiences start off. When students are just beginning to learn, they cannot be expected to know enough to just jump into any classroom. Observation is an effective and beneficial way to get pre-service teachers into and involved in the classroom but not in an overwhelming way.
The course “Introduction to Education” demands that you earn fourteen hours of field experience in a classroom as well as one hour observing a school board meeting. The specific type of field experience I am supposed to get for this class is “observation”. This past semester, I have been observing a fifth-grade class at Astoria Park Elementary. I observe this class every Friday morning from 9:20am to around noon. This gives me nearly three hours of field experience every week, which is near the average time an actual college course meets per week. Because of this, I would consider the field experience requirement comparable to taking another education class, similarly to how someone would take a lab alongside a natural science course.
One of the most important things that helps to facilitate learning when I go and observe class is the service learning project we are required to complete. This project has a couple different aspects but they all work together to ensure that the students get the most out of our field experience and it also makes sure that the students are creating something to display what they have learned in the field. One aspect of the project is that we are required to get the teacher of the class we are observing to sign off that we came every week. We also have to record the time we spend in the classroom and what we did. There are many other things that the service learning project entails.
There are different “classroom logs” we must complete each time we observe that help highlight important details we should be noticing and paying attention to. Sometimes, the classroom log asks us to talk about the classroom demographics. It is important to be able to analyze a classroom and interpret what those results could mean in a learning environment. It asks us to describe the students, how they look, their race and gender, as well as their appearance. These are all important things to keep in mind as a teacher. All the classroom logs also focus on making us observe certain aspects of the classroom, such as what is on the walls, how the physical class is set up, how the teacher talks to the students or how the students interact with each other. The list of things that can be observed in a classroom observation is endless. The logs take all that information and condense it into something that I can look back on and review everything I learned from my time in the classroom.
For the same class, we also are required to write a couple of journal reflections throughout the semester. These reflections are less detailed than the classroom logs but they are still a useful tool in helping students make sure they are learning during their time in the classroom. The reflections are aimed towards making students think about everything they have observed and how it would influence them as a teacher. It also helps them summarize some key points and knowledge that they have learned while in the field.
In my own personal experience, I feel like I have learned the most through my experiences in the fifth-grade class I observe. It is especially satisfying because I get to see what I have learned in my college course play out in front of my very eyes. For example, in class, we often discuss and debate certain ideas and issues relating to education and the problems that come along with that. One time, we were discussing whether boys and girls should ever be spilt up in the classroom. Some students in the class argued that boys and girls should never be split up because it encourages the idea of separation between genders which can harm students’ relational and social skills. Other students argued that a separation between boys and girls could be beneficial because girls and boys will feel more comfortable with classmates of the same gender. The textbook reviewed this topic a little bit and the classroom debate was interesting, but I cannot really say that I learned a lot from it. However, the class I observe is a class that is split up by gender. During the morning, the girls are taught science and math by one teacher and the boys are taught reading and social science by a different teacher. After lunch, they switch. I asked the teacher what she thought of this system and she told me that it was great and that it was working well. She said that she noticed that the girls spoke up more and interacted with her in class without the boys present. She also felt like the boys acted a bit calmer without girls in the classroom. Although these results are not always the case for all schools, grades, or classes, I still found it very interesting and helpful to be able to observe gender separation in a real classroom. Before seeing the separated class, I was not sure how I felt about it, or even how it would play out in real life, however after seeing it in person, I got to better understanding of the pros and cons.
Classroom field experience has also taught me so much by just being in the class, looking around and interacting with students in a way that whenever I am in the classroom, I feel like I am a sponge, absorbing all the information: Astoria Park Elementary is a Title I school. Title I is a program that “provides financial assistance to local educational agencies and schools with high numbers or high percentages of children from low income families to help ensure that all children meet challenging state academic standards” (U.S. Department of Education). Within the first week of observing it was already apparent how badly the school and more specifically, the classroom I was in, was struggling. They were incredibly behind the standards they should be at and they were also incredibly overwhelmed trying to catch up to those standards. This was a good learning experience though because it gave me a look at a school that was falling behind but working at becoming better.
The physical classroom itself is also a good learning experience. The classroom is in the back of the school and in a location where they have no windows, so the teacher purchased large posters of different natural landscapes, to act as fake “windows.” This added a cheerful element to the classroom environment, and it might be something I would consider doing. The classroom also has many different signs, posters, and papers around the room. Some of the papers are student work and some of the papers are different educational signs and reminders to the students. A lot of the signs display certain elements that reflect what the students have learned in class and they also serve as reminders to help the students learn specific topics. For example, there are many signs in the classroom that review certain steps in how to do math problems, such as how to divide decimal numbers. There are also posters that illustrate Venn diagrams depicting subjects like energy and sound. Some other posters around the classroom were more motivation based. These posters were mostly inspirational or encouraging quotes that are nice for students to read. It is also interesting to take in the way the classroom is set up and organized. Different teachers find that some set up works and some do not work. In my class that I observe, the desks are set up in tables, so the students are always in groups. This allows for students to interact with each one another in an educational setting and exchange different thoughts and ideas with their peers which overall encourages learning.
Field experience has also been helpful to me because it gave me the opportunity to meet other teachers and hear advice from each of them. These are teachers who have been teaching for a long time so it is really cool to hear what they have to say and listen to their opinions on all different types of topics. The time they have invested in education as well as their own personal experiences throughout the course of their lives are not only fascinating to hear about but also useful.
Yet another way classroom field experience can be beneficial is through observing different teaching styles. Different teachers have distinctive viewpoints on what they believe teaching and learning should be and it is very interesting to see those ideals lived out in the actual classroom. As much as a textbook can be helpful, it is still hard to completely understand what all the different styles look like in real life without physically seeing it happen. During my classroom observations, I get to see the kind of teaching style my teacher has. It is interesting to watch the way she explains things, the way she interacts with her students, and the way she corrects and praises students for different behaviors. There is truly so much to observe in a classroom and these observations are remarkably more helpful and meaningful than reading from chapters in the textbook.
Overall, field experience is unique and significant way to learn. I have learned so much from my personal experience observing in a classroom, so much more than I have in any of my actual classes. In a way, field experience is comparable to “hands on” learning. Just like there have been studies done to prove that students tend to learn better if they can use more than one of their senses, it is also more beneficial for education major students to get field experience in the classroom rather than be constantly listening to lectures in a lecture hall.
Works Cited
"College of Education | Florida State University." FSU College of Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2017.
Goodlad, John I. “Some Problems and Programs in Improving Pre-Service Teacher Education.” The Elementary School Journal, vol. 54, no. 7, 1954, pp. 391–396.
Lootens, Rachel. Personal interview. 21 February 2017.
"Title I, Part A Program." Home. US Department of Education (ED), 05 Oct. 2015. Web. 27 Mar. 2017.
"What Is a Pre-service Teacher?" Reference. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2017