Classroom Experiences

I'm just starting out in the education program here at UNC Asheville but so far I feel it is a great program and will really prepare me for a career in teaching.

Right away when you start out in the program they have you in classrooms. In my Edu 210 class, the intro class, we did a lot of observations in a couple of different classrooms. You get to observe a middle school class and then a classroom in the grade you are interested in teaching, so if you are interested in high school you go to a high school classroom or if you are interested in elementary education you get placed in an elementary classroom. This allows you to see the difference in teaching at the different levels and can be very helpful if you know you want to teach but are not exactly sure what grade level you want to teach. In another one of my education class we have two observations. This is a class specific for Elementary licensure so the observations are in an elementary classroom. After all the observations you write reflections about what you saw, the kids behaviors and the teachers behaviors. Doing this kind of activity really helped me understand what a classroom is like from the teachers perspective because for most of our lives we have been the students and see it a whole different way.