After an awesome winter break, I have a chance now to reflect back on my experiences during my short practicum. To sum up my experience in a few short words… It was a blast! I felt like the school staff and students welcomed me into their space, learned way more than I expected to, and felt like I was choosing the right career path on becoming a teacher.

During my short two weeks, I really did learn a lot through observation and my three mini lessons that I taught. I knew that during these two weeks, I needed to absorb every thing that I could, so I decided to stay open-minded, taking every little thing into consideration, and asking for a lot of advice from my Student Advisor (SA). My SA really showed me the ropes and told me that while the things you learn at UBC are good, a lot of it is not really practical when you’re actually teaching; this was actually very true.

Yes, it’s good to have self-assessment in the classroom, it’s ideal to have all the tools and machinery in the shop brand new, and it’s awesome if every student is engaged in classroom activities. But this is not the case in the classroom; many classes already have pre-made rubrics and assessment tools that need to be used (implemented by admin), the tools and machinery is usable at best, and not every student is engaged. What the practicum showed me is that while the philosophies and theories behind education learned at UBC is important, what’s equally important is taking away from what I learned in class, and actually implementing things that work and don’t work in to the classroom at school.

As it was only a short practicum, I’m looking forward to my upcoming long 10 week practicum so that I can put my theories and philosophies to the test. I know it will be long and tiring, but it will also be an invaluable experience for my future, and I have high expectations that I want to achieve during the practicum.