Practicum Reflection

This semester I was placed in the Early Childhood Education Center on campus. I was placed into a room with 18-24 month olds with my participating teacher Brittany Sylstad. While in my practicum placement I realized that while I thought I wanted to be teaching 4-5 year olds exclusively, I would definitely teach younger kids if given the chance. In this reflection I will discuss the environment I was in, a way a student’s differences were respected, and one question that I developed while reflecting on my practicum placement.
My practicum classroom met most of the points that Ayers addresses in Chapter 3, but I will talk about one in particular. The most prominent thing I noticed about my practicum classroom was that the environment was
After talking to Brittany I learned that this student did not speak much at school because at home his parents spoke mostly Spanish. Soon after I learned this I noticed some things the teachers did to accommodate this student’s difference. At the Early Childhood Education Center the student’s begin to learn basic Spanish starting in the 2 year old room, but because of this particular student’s difference, the teachers in the 18-24 month room tried to use the Spanish they knew on a daily basis in an attempt to get the Spanish speaking student to participate more and feel more at home. In Chapter 2 of Ayers the message of seeing the student as an individual is strongly emphasized, and page 18 goes deeper into not labeling students. I saw this in Brittany’s classroom when they did not simply label the student as a child who needed extra help or needed to be in a different classroom. Instead they acknowledged that this student was an individual with needs different than the other students, and the teachers worked with that to help the
In my practicum classroom I noticed that some of the students were able to communicate and speak in full or at least fragmented sentences; however, there were also a few students who could not yet speak at all. With the students that did not speak we mostly asked them yes or no questions that gave them the opportunity to communicate with gestures as well as try to speak some simple words, but what else could be done to try to keep them on pace with the other students? Just brainstorming ideas has left me with the thoughts of having activities in the room that teach the same sort of lesson, but maybe with varying levels of difficulty so that the students who are up to it can challenge themselves further and the students who may be behind can still be learning. Also, making sure the environment is welcoming and safe will give all students the comfort they need to feel ready to learn. I hope to find more ways to help students of varying levels with the furthering of my