Journal 5

Last year, I spent two hours everyday in a first grade classroom at Nayatt Elementary School in Barrington, RI. That experience was very different from being at Pleasant View Elementary School this past semester.
Nayatt had everything a school needs. It had an amazing playground, materials galore, amazing teachers, and lots of support staff. They had a teacher for just social and emotional learning and I found that was super helpful with many of the students who had trouble expressing their emotions. The classroom I was in was probably 80% white and really did not have that much diversity. I truly loved being at Nayatt and thought that I would definitely want to teach in a suburban school district.
Going to Pleasant View was very different. The classroom was so diverse and I loved that because I should not just be in a classroom full of students that look like me. At Pleasant View, there is no true playground. The children sometimes play outside on the concrete in front of the school which shocked me. I realized many schools do not have the resources they need. Inside my classroom, it looks like students have everything they would need in order to be successful. I realized early on that many of the books the classroom had were falling apart. Children cannot learn how to read properly if they are not supplied the tools.
The teacher I worked with at Pleasant View was absolutely amazing and worked so hard for her classroom to be welcoming and have tools students can use to learn from. This teacher has the most amazing way of having her students walk through the halls while behaving. I never saw students behaving so well in the hallways while I was at Nayatt. The teacher I worked with at Pleasant View never split students into groups based on abilities because she knew that all students can learn from each other. She tried to do many things so that all her students would be engaged and would want to learn. She really cared about each of her students and it showed in her teaching.

The teacher I worked with helped me realize that you do not need to work at a school with tons of money and lots of resources in order to be successful. Before starting at Pleasant View, I thought that I would definitely want to teach in a suburban area with tons of resources but that is not true anymore. I have learned that I can become an effective teacher anywhere I go as long as I care about my students and their interests.

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