Practicum

So far, our practicum has gone fairly well. The students are great and Stephens Elementary is a wonderful school. We are just somewhat discouraged because we don't feel very useful while we are there, or that we are really gaining much experience that we can use later. The Montessori style of classroom is a very neat concept, but the students spend long periods of time sitting on their individual rugs (because there are no desks) and work on whatever they choose to work on. A lot of times, they work on thier own and therefore there are long periods of time that we cannot do anything other than make copies or sit and observe them. The teacher does not teach in front of the classroom, the students are supposed to teach themselves and learn on their own. We asked our CT on Wednesday if we can start coming in the mornings so that we might be able to see more things happening. We'll see! On Wednesday, we were able to see a couple of the students work a very large world map puzzle. It was very nice to see them working together and being able to have a finished product from team work.