Weekly reflection

This week I learned a lot while shadowing Mrs. Black in the Kearsarge Elementary School’s special needs classroom. I learned a lot ranging from gaining knowledge on what autism is, to learning how to work with the children. As soon as I arrived to the school I jumped right into taking part in activities with the children. Mrs. Black worked patiently with me, and thoroughly explained everything she did. If I ever had a question she would always answer it to the best of her ability, or research the answer somewhere.
All of my goals were accomplished in some way. My first goal was to improve my ability to work with a range of people from the teachers to the children. As I predicted in my proposal, this was accomplished by direct service through working with students in the special needs classroom. My second goal was to be able to help people who are struggling, and need the help. In my proposal I had activities on how to reach my goals, and I followed them out very thoroughly and productively. I reached this goal by being an active observer and listener, and by using strategies that the classroom teachers and specialists use on a daily basis. In addition, I was able to read a child’s record in order to obtain a better understanding of their background and special need. The third goal I made for myself was to form a better understanding of different learning styles. I successfully completed all of my suggested activities for this goal. I shadowed a professional working with a diverse population of students, reviewed literature to gain a better understanding of learning styles, and directly worked with students to engage them in the learning process.
I am enjoying my project very much so far. I have been just observing how Mrs. Black works with her students, interacting and working with the children, and researching more about various learning differences, more specifically Aspergers. Mrs. Black has asked me to do activities such as working with children who’s learning specialist’s did not come in, and also activities like reading to children, or taking over one of her classes. I believe she asked me to do these certain activities so that I could use the observations I had made to actually test them out. She encourages and looks forward to my increasing knowledge. Mrs. Black helps me reach my goals by giving me activities to enhance my understanding of different learning styles, while at the same time explaining the way everything works.
I don’t know what activities are in store for this upcoming week, but I know that as each day goes on, my knowledge will continue to increase. I will continue to do research, interact with the children, and continue to observe Mrs. Black. I am truly enjoying my time at Kearsarge, and feel inspired to continue this type of work in the future.