a. Fox Hollow Elementary Has an enrollment of 916 students. Fox Hollow has 204 students that receive free lunch and 86 students that are on the reduced lunch plan. The school is located in a mixed economic area having students that live in both single family and multi-family homes. The racial demographics for Fox Hollow is predominantly white at about 95%. The next to largest race represented is Hispanic or Latino at about 3.0% . The remanding 2% is made up of Black or African American, American Indian &Alaska-Native, Asian, and Pacific Islander. Most grades in this school are represented by a multicultural group of students.
b. Our relationship with Mrs. O’Very is one of mutual respect and friendship. We found her to be open to letting us try different management tactics. She gave us good advice and then an opportunity to use the advice she gave. She understood that we had certain goals and objectives we were trying to achieve and gave us every opportunity to reach them. When we had completed our field experience and were leaving she told us she thought with a little more practice with pacing our lessons and classroom management we would make great teachers.
c. Our cooperating teacher loved the digital story and more importantly so did our students. We were asked by Mrs. O’Very to teach about WWI and WWII and so we made a digital story on WWI so that we could open our unit with it. When we finished our unit on WWI and started on WWII both Mrs. O’Very and our students asked if we had made a second one for WWII. So we made an additional one and played it at the end of our unit to tie everything up. It was great.
d. Mrs. O’Very said our lessons were wonderful thought out and put together. She said that we had covered things she hadn’t considered and used approaches that she thought added to the students learning and their deeper understanding of the material. She emailed us yesterday and asked for copies of everything we did in her classroom.
e. The training session went well. Mrs. O’Very is a recent graduate from UVU (she graduated a year ago) so she is very aware of how a digital story is created. She allowed us to explain the process of creating a digital story and then we showed her the one that we created. It was helpful to reteach her the process because it helped us to remember all of the steps and to have a better understanding of the whole process as well. She loves our story so she was very pleased with the work that we did on it and was thankful for the retraining session.
f. We enjoyed this service-learning experience. It was a great learning experience for both of us. We learned a ton about classroom management because we had quite a rowdy group. Even the principal told us that it was a great opportunity for us to see that not every class is an easy class. It enhanced our desire to be teachers and to help educate the children of the future.
g. Our cooperating teacher gained two excited students thrilled to be in her classroom. She was also given some new ideas for the future when she teaches about WWI and WWII. She has asked us if she can keep the copies of all of the handouts, digital stories, Power Points and information that we used. She enjoyed watching us teach and it gave her new insight on how her class responds to teaching. She said it was a great time for her to reflect on her use of technology, classroom management and a reminder of some of the things that she learned while at UVU. We were able to learn from her and she also learned from us. It was a great experience for all involved.
h. We gained an even greater appreciation for teaching and teachers. We used the information that we have learned in our classes this semester and recognized the things that we have been taught. It was a time of learning and trying to improve. We learned that perfection isn’t required, just the desire to do our best and act upon it. We gained a strong desire to be in our own classrooms but understand that we still have much to learn. Our cooperating teacher was a good example to us and was always excited to share new things with us and to help us learn as much as we could.
i. The Field Experience Service Learning Project was definitely worth every minute. We feel that we have a better understanding of curriculum, classroom management and use of technology because of what we learned in the field. We look forward to our next field experience with excitement.
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