Walking into my second school visit this week, I was a little bit surprised by how much more confident I felt having had one previous day at a middle school. The two middle schools that I visited were both distinctly different in many ways, yet I had a much better idea about how things were structured, and what to expect upon entering the building. Whereas last week my main priority was to get a sense of what a middle school really was in general and how it functioned, this week my goal was to spend more time interacting with the students in classes that I visited and to get a sense of the differences between different classes.
Tag: school visit
A tip on conflict management
This isn’t my weekly practicum reflection but… While I was at my school visit today, one teacher went out of her way to explain to me her method for dealing with conflicts between students after a disagreement occurred. I was very grateful for her care and advice, and decided to take note of it.
School visit reflection (I)
What is a middle school? What kind of atmosphere does it have? How does it function? How is it different from an elementary or high school? My mind swirled with questions as I stepped foot into a middle school for the first time. I couldn’t help but wonder if media portrayals of middle schools–which I always dismissed as overdramatized and unreal–would somehow be manifested in the place I was about to visit.
Growing up in system that did not have middle schools, the term remains a foreign concept to me, and I struggle to get a sense of what life in middle school could be like. To my relief, the school that I visited did not scream of all the middle school conventions that I’d seen on TV and in books–however that’s not to say there were not less dramatic suggestions of those conventions that I did not notice in the few hours I was at the school. Nevertheless, my first day of practicum went rather well and I enjoyed my visit.