Jake Grimsley

School Journal #5

1. One of the main things I have been able to learn about myself from my experience in the

schools is how I tend to feel in tense, and sometimes stressful, situations. With no

intention of sounding biased against the age range that I was teaching in the slightest,

Pre-K students are often a lot harder to deal with than older students in a way. They tend

to be louder, and a bit more chaotic. As someone that wants to teach high school, I know

that may be the road I am headed down as well, so it was good to have some time during

these practicums where I was not necessarily prepared for the amount of chaos that would

ensue. This allowed me to gain skills in problem solving that I could transfer to many

other situations, and gave me a base of knowledge to know how I would react if this were

to happen again.

2. One benefit was that I was able to really get used to this class, and through that I got to

experience in a way what it would be like to see a class every day. In every other

practicum I’ve been to, it has only been 50 minutes where I don’t interact very much with

the students, and that was all that I gained from the experience. With these practicums,

as I was able to go five separate times, I got to get used to the different students and to

the class as a whole, and to “hone in” my skills and knowledge with this class over time.

Another benefit was being able to work with an age range of students which I had never

worked with before. Before this, all my experience had to do more with either middle

school or high school level learners, but being around students as young as the ones I was

around was incredibly informative, and gave me a new experience.

3. On page 63 of the book, in chapter 3, it is said that “Ten percent of all students in schools

are English language learners (ELLs), meaning they have limited English proficiency
 Jake Grimsley

(LEP). Yet, less than one percent of classroom teachers are trained to teach these

students.” Another thing that made my time at this school rather unique was the fact that

almost half of the kids in the class that I worked in were non-native English speakers. As

such, I wasn’t trained to necessarily teach these kids the way I was supposed to, but I still

was able to help. I was told the way that we were to talk to them was to ask many

questions, and to basically get them to talk as much as possible, to give them practice

speaking English. I would ask them questions about what they were doing, what they

were playing with, and if they were having fun, and attempt to engage them in a

conversation through that. This was a new experience for me, and one I wasn’t

necessarily comfortable with at the start, but I got used to it over time. Relating back to

the book, it was astounding to me how many of the students were native Spanish

speakers. With that many of them, it would have been very useful to have teachers with

more training, and although we didn’t have that, at least we made a conscious effort to

incorporate them into the learning environment with everyone else. While there could be

more done, the school I was at was definitely heading in the right direction.

4. Similar to the last question, I thought as a result of this experience that I would love to

have more training in Spanish classes again. I took five years of Spanish before college,

but don’t remember much now, and if I were to brush up on some of the skills I had

learned, it could make me a better teacher as a whole. It could also due me some good to

have more experience in schools of this level of diversity in the future.