Student Teaching Reflection

Kindergarten at Harris- Lake Park Elementary in Lake Park, Iowa School District

During my student teaching experience in Kindergarten, I have had the opportunity to learn so

much about myself from an educator standpoint and as a person. I have worked on developing lesson

plans that fit with our Iowa Standards, I have developed meaningful relationships with all of the 20

students in my classroom as well as our 2 TK students, my cooperating teacher and other staffing our

building as well as the Middle School/ High school building, I have been able to attend our DLT meeting,

I took part in our parent teacher conferences as well as was able to interact with parents virtual and in

person.

During my students teaching time I was about to work with my cooperating teach, Kristi

Mentink. She has been teaching for 25 year and this is her 5th year at Harris Lake Park Elementary. Kristi

has been an amazing mentor teacher to work under. She has shared her experiences I the classroom,

give me lots of advice and knowledge on what education looks like today. She has been there for me as I

transition into gaining my own classroom with the district. She gives be questions of advice on what I

should do with different situations with this position to help me move forward. Kristi has an amazing

classroom management set up that I have been able to watch and use as a great guide into my future

classroom. She will do anything for the children and will constantly be a sounding board for me as well

as I have been for her during this first semester.

During my student teaching, I started about a week and a half before students joined us. This

was our before the school year professional development that was a great way for me to meet the

different teacher and staff at both buildings. It is a very small district so I was able to meet everyone

relatively quickly. We had a back-to-school night that I was able to meet the different students as well as
their families. The first few weeks of school, I was observing but worked some student’s individual on

different skills. After about 2 weeks, I slowly started to take things over. I took over math first and

worked with students individually on some of these skills.

I took the room over full time for about 4 and a half weeks. During this time I created lesson

plan, came into school early and stayed after to work on and plan lesson plans, and I tested out

classroom management strategies I had been considering using in the future. I was able to use my

cooperating teacher as a great sounding board for my different ideas. I was about to cover number 5-9

recognition, use our collaborative classroom curriculum for the different aspects of reading, start and

end our day with our calendar in the morning and science in the afternoon and worked on trying out a

few different tools to help the classroom run smoothly that have helped still after.

I have spent my last few weeks observing 1st grade, 5th grade and 7th grade. I will be working

with some of these grades and have been loving observing them on a daily basis. I was truly able to

believe that this classroom was my own for a while. I have been able to build relationship with my

cooperative teacher as well as my students that are going to be hard to leave after forming them for

four months. I am truly grateful for this opportunity and will remember this time for a long time. I am

excited to have my own classroom in about a months and see what is to come.