Extremely Beneficial and Rewarding Teaching Experience

Our guest blogger for the post below is Cristal Bruce, Class of 2018 elementary education.

I was offered the opportunity to do my cooperative experience in the spring/summer cycle. I am the first student to begin this program at the School of Education and have received funding from donors that are working with the school. The reason that this co-op is so unusual is because I am combining my pre-student teaching along with it. That means that instead of just completing twelve weeks of pre-student teaching, I work full time for twenty weeks.

The school where I work is called the Parent Infant Center. It is a pre-school for students ranging from infant to five years old. I essentially work as a full-time teacher and take on most of the responsibilities as the lead teacher. I have gone to parent-teacher conferences as well as teacher meetings and lesson plan meetings. We all give ideas on different activities for the students, aimed at all of the core subjects. Since I was also completing my pre-student teaching, I wrote my own lesson plans and used them for class instruction. Working forty hours a week has given me a lot of time to observe different practices for teaching young children. This experience has taught me more than just what I learn in class. I have seen and performed the practices that are the foundation of early childhood education.