Field Placements 

Premier Academy, Rochester 

At the time of this field placement in 2021, I was employed by Premier Academy as a floating assistant. My actual placement was in the young fives/ kindergarten classroom. With the relationship and trust I had already built with this classroom teacher, I was able to lead a few mini-math lessons. These math lessons were focused on addition and subtraction within ten. Through this experience, I better understood how building relationships with students is key to their learning progress. After the math mini-lessons, I would pull small groups of students who struggled during the whole group instruction and aid them in the completion of their math worksheets.

West Utica Elementary, Utica 

 During this field placement in 2021, I worked in the second and third grades. My primary responsibilities in the second grade were to observe the morning meeting, pull out individual students, conduct fluency and comprehension assessments, and use the results to administer personalized reading instruction. In the third-grade classroom, I assisted students in completing their social studies work and worked with one student daily on the basic rules of addition and subtraction. The student and I would play math games, work on unfinished homework, and apply his reading comprehension skills to word problems.

 

Embedded Field Placements

During my time at Oakland, I have completed three embedded field placements. Embedded field placements are when Oakland classes are held at an elementary school. 

Leonard Elementary School, Troy

I had two classes held in Leonard Elementary in 2022 the first one Teaching Language Arts and the second Teaching of Reading. In Teaching Language Arts, we worked with fifth-grade students on building their language arts skills. I assessed two students' interests in a writing survey written by me. With these results, I created innovative and engaging lessons about how to writing, studying a text's story arc, and by having the students write their own story arcs. In the Teaching of Reading class, I worked with first and fifth-graders to improve their fluency and comprehension skills. I did this through various activities like word-building exercises, read-alouds, story arc studies, and summarizing texts. These were the first field placements that I had the opportunity to design and implement my own lesson plans. I learned the importance of scaffolding when designing a new lesson meant to teach and new skill or concept to students.

West Utica Elementary, Utica

I worked with first and fourth graders on reading appraisal in this embedded field placement in 2022. This placement taught me the importance of flexibility amid abrupt changes. Our meetings with students were initially delayed due to miscommunication, which put off our first lesson with the first graders. The delayed start and student absences made it difficult to complete the list of assessments needed to complete the final project for the class. I had to learn how to decide which assessments would give me an accurate representation of my student's reading levels. Some days having to try and fit two assessments into one lesson while still keeping the student's attention. 

 

Student Teaching

Washington Elementary, Washington

I had the distinct pleasure of working with my mentor teacher in her second-grade classroom for two semesters at Washington Elementary in 2022-2023. In the first fall semester, I would visit the classroom twice a week for half a day. During this time, I observed my mentor teacher build a maintain a classroom culture of mutual respect and collaboration. I had the opportunity to work in small groups of students, either building their mathematical or reading skills. During this fall semester, my main concern was building relationships with the students in preparation for my student teaching semester.

My student teaching experience took place in the winter 2023 semester. Through this experience, I learned my teaching and classroom management style.  I spent the first two weeks only teaching math, but I eagerly began to take over more and more subjects. My main concern was maintaining the classroom culture I had observed in the fall semester, and I did this through regular relationship-building exercises during the class's morning meeting.  I collaborated with the building's other second-grade teachers on science and social studies lessons. I regularly sought out feedback from both my mentor teacher and the building's principal and became a more reflective teacher because of this. I prided myself on creating innovative lesson plans to engage my students. I used the new smart board my mentor teacher was piloting in her classroom and taught her about some of its cutting-edge features. I attended parent-teacher conferences and provided input about how the students were doing in the class. I am most proud of the relationship I built with students, families, and the teachers in the building. 

Letters of Recommendation