Travel Experience Reflection

There are numerous misconceptions when it comes to teaching, ranging from beliefs about the school environment to a teacher’s social life outside the classroom. Ultimately, one cannot truly understand how the educational system works without seeing it first-hand. As a result of my keen interest in a teaching career, I embarked on a trip to the state of Florida with an aim of learning how different teachers utilize their special skills to instill adequate knowledge to their learners. The main purpose of the trip was so that I would be able to have a first-hand experience of what a teacher undergoes on a typical working day. With our field trip experiences, however, we took a step closer to understanding. Students begin taking Spanish their sophomore year and progress through the program if they wish to do so.

The teacher I observed was responsible for teaching all three levels throughout the day. This seemed to be one of her most difficult challenges of the day, and I can understand why. Because of the different abilities of her students at the three levels, she had to alter how much Spanish she spoke in the classroom. With her level one students she used very basic vocabulary and verb tenses, whereas she was able to develop more complex sentences when speaking to her level three students. I believe she could have enhanced their skills by making them communicate in the target language for the entire class period. While I enjoyed the overall experience of observing the high school classroom, there were several components of the educational system that I was critical of.

For example, Crawford Mosley High School has recently integrated the latest technology, the iPad, into its classrooms. Every student has an iPad, which serves as a tool for homework, classroom discussions, or even tests and quizzes. Although it was efficient, I felt it hindered the teaching-learning process because it interfered with one-on-one interaction between teachers and students. The teacher told me that organizational skills are arguably the most vital aspect of her job. With the exception of her high school class, she deals with every student on an individual basis. Since she only meets with certain students on specific days, it is imperative that she keeps each student’s work organized in a separate file. This file also helps her track the students’ progress since they are all at various learning stages.

She also told me that planning is a challenging part of her day. When I listened to her conversation with the school principal, he seemed uninterested in what she had to say about her class that day. Her fellow teachers did not work well with her, either. She pulls students out of their classrooms when it is time to work with them, and some of the teachers were not very cooperative with this concept. Overall, the school did not seem to appreciate or respect the ESL program. This was quite upsetting to me because I am interested in working with an ESL program, so it made me wonder if this lack of support exists in every school district. At the high school level I constantly felt like I was being judged by the students, and at the elementary school I sensed that the students were afraid of me.