Prompt 7

This experience is shaping my teacher identity more and more each time I visit. I am beginning to think about how I would do things in my own classroom when I see things that the teacher does. I learn new things everytime I visit the classroom. For example, some things I learn are how to teach the kids the alphabet, months of the year, and days of the week using songs they can easily remember. It also is making me become more accepting and familiar with different ethnic backgrounds, because I came from a school where there was mostly white kids and only a small percentage of blacks and hispanics. I not only get to learn from being with the kids, but while the kids are at lunch, I talk with the teacher about a lot of things. She is very open to questions, even though I feel like I am interrupting her work. She explains to me how she does a lot of things. I am learning how to organize easily and how to keep up with all the work, and how to deal with giving attention to all the students equally. I am also learning how to interact with the students' parents, because they frequently come in to talk to the teacher while I am there. I also am learning how to deal with special needs children. One thing I have a question about is the following: There is an autistic child in my classroom who is three years old. He always wants to sit on my lap and sing songs with me to keep him occupied, and my teacher tells me that it is okay to do that because he does it with her all the time. I was told that we couldn't allow the students to sit on our laps. Would this be an exception?

Prompt 3

I have visited the school 5 times so far, twice just over vacation, and I am starting to get a better sense of what techniques the teacher uses to get through to each and every child when she is teaching. In her classroom, there are 5 special needs children. Two of them have made much progress and can pretty much do most things on their own, another one is getting there, but she still needs assistance with some things, and the other two are completely dependent on an aide at all times. When I visited the school Wednesday, the teacher was having the students make a tiger mask. She set up all the children with the glue, scissors, paper, and crayons that they would need, and then she sat at the desk with the two dependent special needs students. She worked through, with much patience, the project with them. I sat with the other child that sometimes needs help and walked her through as well. This definitely helps having the teachers one on one with the students because it causes them to get the attention they need to learn how to be independent. It also creates a one on one conversation, which helps the special needs children with their language. The teacher also has to do olympic games three times a week. She splits the class into two groups and has two teachers in each group. The kids go through a series of events to test their skills and coordination. The teacher splitting the kids into two groups also helps the students get more one on one time with the teachers. Overall, I think she has great techniques in teaching an integrated preschool class.