This week’s field experience was an exciting one to undermine it.

Being at an elementary
school this week made it all more thrilling. Crooked Creek Elementary School was a beautiful
school to be in and I had such a great time while I was there. From the discussion, I learned that
Washington Township as a whole district, is focusing on renovations for the school. Crooked
Creek finished their renovations last year, and the layout of this school with the renovations,
made the school atmosphere so welcoming. Each grade is in its own pod-style “neighborhood,”
as they are labeled on signs around the school. Interestingly enough, the kindergarten was in its
separate section in the “basement” that the teachers we were with that day joked about. Yet, even
lower, there were still such bright colors and lots of artwork from the students. Both 30-minute
intervals of being in kindergarten with Ms. Richardson and 5th grade with Hessler gave me great
moments of working alongside their students.
From my personal experience of my time at Crooked Creek, I wanted to discuss my time
in Ms. Richardson’s kindergarten classroom. Not only was it great to be in the classroom of a
Butler alumni, but I also feel that I was truly able to dive into time with her students and
recognize behaviors more than I would’ve ever seen at the middle school level. Automatically
when we entered in, their bright smiles greeted us and I started to feel brighter as when they all
were so excited seeing us enter. Or with their watching eyes waiting to see where the Butler
students will sit. I joined a group of three that had Sophia, Levi, and Erick at it. They all were
very kind and told me all about themselves. Especially since it was the day before they went on
spring break. One student I started engaging with was Levi since he was still working on their
dice-rolling activity when Sophia and Erick finished and went to read. The activity was to roll
the dice, write down the word, say the word, and say a sentence with that word in it. I noticed
that Levi was getting very distracted and wanted to tell me everything and anything about
himself, his family, his ninja turtle onesie, you name it.
One thing I considered is that I didn’t want to be the reason he didn’t finish the activity.
So I made sure to make it more entertaining between the both of us, so he kept going. We would
laugh a lot since I would say funny sentences as examples. One example of this was the word
“saw” I told him, “I saw three dogs across the river.” And he laughed like crazy. I made sure to
keep him on track and would praise him for the sentences he would make and how he continued
to stay on task. This was used with HLP #7 of giving quick and supportive oral feedback. I used
this strategy a lot with Levi, E’Shawn, and the 5th graders I saw later on as well. Now, E’Shawn
was another student who was at a table by himself. I would keep noticing him waving to all the
other Butler students who would walk by and heard the teacher keep reminding him to start the
activity, as many of his classmates were almost done. I told Levi, I was going to talk with his
classmate and would be back. I do feel bad, since I ended up spending the rest of my time with
E’Shawn, since when I went over to him, he had this huge smile appear on his face.
He made my mood rise even more in happiness and excitement than I realized. It was
clear that he wanted to have time with a Butler student like everyone else, so I made sure I would
give it to him. I was starting with notes first and saw his name on his activity sheet, and he
automatically went “How do you know my name? Why did you write it?” It made me freeze
before I laughed and said I was taking “teacher notes” of my time in Crooked Creek. Luckily I
was able to change the conversation to focus more on his activity sheet. Continuously asking
small questions to keep him engaged. He questioned why I kept asking what words were on his
paper after he had already said them. I joked that I liked hearing him saying them, which got a
giggle in return. I was able to have more of a fun side of our time together by wishing to roll a
six. Somehow, for a whole 7 minutes, we couldn’t roll a six. Once we rolled a six, we both got a
huge smile on our faces and celebrated. It was a small moment but made me not forget about him
for the rest of my day.
My time in kindergarten made me consider the balance of the teacher trying to make sure
they give individualized attention to all of their students. I truly could see even with just
interacting with a few students, how much they all love to be given specialized attention and
given feedback meant for them. It makes me want to further dive into how I can be successful
with this myself since I also want to have strong relationships with my students and be able to
give them all the support I can give them.
For my experience overall at Crooked Creek, I had such a fun time, as mentioned before.
Even with both grades kindergarten and 5th grades, it helped set in stone how much I want to be
an elementary education teacher, and will work hard to make sure I become one. The whole
experience went well and the time spent in both classes was balanced as I believe I was able to
get a lot of time and experience in both. I appreciated how much I connected with the students
for sure, made me truly realize how such little time can still impact a student. The only thing I
fixed and said didn’t go well, was my transition of leaving both classes. Since I had such good
times in both classes, the students liked me and were upset when we were leaving. In the 5th
grade classroom, the group I worked with for the last ten minutes was begging me to stay. It
made me feel honored they all liked me so much, but I didn’t transition well for leaving, since
my classmates would be waiting for me, so we could leave.
To dive deeper into different educational aspects, one of the professional questions I
wanted to explore was how instruction was delivered. Within both classes, all students were
seated near other students and had small group work or independent work but were able to
interact with their other classmates. This kind of instruction is very valuable and I have
considered that I will use this in my educational future. Especially since small groups can help
with both social and general learning in class. With that, another professional aspect I wanted to
look into was the presence of clear rules and expectations. I saw this two different ways since it
was two very different age ranges because of the grades. In kindergarten, the board had all of the
directions written down for all of the students to see. With classroom rules on another wall of the
classroom. In 5th grade, it was seen that expectations and directions were led more by Ms.
Hessler’s verbal descriptions and words. Yet, I do believe that I am seeing more of the completed
picture of clear expectations since it’s closer to the end of the school year.
The last professional development question I am going to address is: “Were there
difficulties or misconceptions with the learning? How did you address them?” As all of my other
field experience write-ups have been for this semester, there is the difficulty of admitting that I
don’t know everything either. In 5th grade, they were doing an escape room activity and worked
together in groups to answer questions about the government to progress further. I don’t
remember much about the government at all. In the end, since there was no answer key given to
us, I would joke that I could “cheat,” would look things up on my phone. I made sure to use it
only to see what answers were incorrect so I could propose which questions to reconsider their
answers. Instead of not knowing what the material was, in the kindergarten class was making
sure to have students focus on the activity but still make it fun. I mentioned a bit about this
before, but I felt that E’Shawn and Levi would sometimes seem confused about why I was so
focused on completing their dice roll activity worksheet with them. So I would make it so each
other time I would roll the dice, or we would switch off who would say a sentence with the word.
It helped keep the activity going and I was able to interact with them in general to make it fun.
Coming to the end of this whole field experience write-up, I wanted to lastly discuss
Natalie Manthey. One of the special education teachers who connected my classmates and me to
have this experience that day. Mainly since her everlasting kindness was seen the moment we
walked into Crooked Creek. She was so honest and gave us such fulfilling responses to every
question asked. With her honesty, I appreciate her admitting right in the beginning that “every
day is different here.” As a future educator, I want to keep in mind that no day will be similar
and it’s best to go day-by-day. As the little rewards of each day, make it all worth it. And her
responses gave me more understanding as a future educator, she has made me consider more
about education as a whole. She mentions, “You can’t be in special education without social
justice.” With my time in this class and others, I truly believe that statement. Special education is
so much more than people like to consider. So I wanted to thank her for a moment for giving me
something to ponder more. As well as the opportunity to visit Crooked Creek, it’s a school I will
remember.