Teaching Career Education at Harwin Elementary: First Teaching Practice.

Thank you Christine for setting up the incredible opportunity to visit Harwin Elementary to teach three 60 minute sessions. This was an unforgettable experience. Engaging with the Grade 1 students, guiding them through activities and games that helped them explore different careers and skills for jobs in our community. Not only was the teaching fun and exciting, but the relationships that formed in a such short time, was incredibly rewarding.

Day 1 at Harwin, is a day I will never forget. It’s crazy how first impressions can leave on a person, and not for myself but the students as well. After the first 60 minutes was up, I had a difficult time wanting to leave. This lesson was a great learning and teaching experience for both Linda and I to engage with the students, develop classroom management techniques, and explore way to foster an inclusive and interactive learning activity in a short 60 minutes. A major success was creating a welcoming atmosphere with a sharing circle. This allowed for learning each student’s name something they liked or enjoyed doing. This was an easy way to build a connection and demonstrated the importance of relationship-based teaching. Below was the activity sheet we did on Day 1 at Harwin. This was easy way to connect with students, through reflection and comparing our favourite things.

Day 2 at Harwin, was another exciting and fun 60 minute session with the students. We started our lesson with sharing a story on the carpet with the students. The students loved the story we choose. We allowed for many questions and connection while reading, allowing students to connect with the community members they had knowledge. This also allowed students to share what their family members did as a career. We discussed how important community members are to the community, and how we can be anything we want to be. The learning activity we choose for this lesson, was much to simple for the students. This was a great learning experience for Linda and I both. Although, the students did enjoy the activity, we had to improvise the lesson by doing another sharing circle. This allowed for more discussion and connection with students, which is a win.

Day 3 at Harwin, was chaotic but rewarding. I taught his lesson solo, due to Linda being sick. This is was a perfect moment of learning and teaching experience for myself. I was able to connect one-on-one with students, build further connections and relationships. I started off the lesson with reviewing the community members we discussed last lesson, then followed by some coloured pictures that showed the community members in uniforms. Students were then giving one piece of the community member puzzle. Students had to work together to find all four of the puzzle pieces that matched each community member. Students LOVED this, and wanted to play again. As students were working on the other activity sheets, there was a group of students playing memory with the puzzle pieces. The puzzle allowed for a versatile game- a puzzle or memory. The students absolutely loved this, as did the classroom teacher. Not only was the experience to connect with the students, but also allowed for relationship building with the classroom teacher. She was so thankful to have me in her class her the 60 minute sessions. She even requested to have me a TC in the fall, and asked for copy of the puzzle for her classroom.