During the past two semesters of my internship, I
have had the opportunity to take on many responsibilities. A few of them include supervision of after
school and lunch detention, and another was taking a leadership role during
Family Learning Breakfast. These
opportunities have helped me to grow as a teacher as well as a professional
educator on her way to becoming a leader in my school.
One
of the first experiences that I have had was taking on the responsibility of
detention. At DPA, the teachers are left
in charge of doing their own detentions or they can collaborate or not do them
at all. I took on the job of
coordinating detention for all of 1st grade. The process of issuing a detention is not as
simple as handing the students a detention slip. If the teacher elects to give a student
detention, the teacher needs to notify the parents of the detention but first
they must document the reason in the school computer system. The teacher must give at least 24 hour notice
as well to ensure that the parents have appropriate notice so they can make
transportation arrangements. Parents are
required to come into the school building to pick their child up from after
school detention unless the office has approved other arrangements. Teachers
could also refer students to lunch detention as well. Students were to remain
absolutely quiet in the detention room and remain seated. Trips to the bathroom
or water fountain are to be discouraged unless it is an emergency. Students who
have lunch detention were not to participate in any recess activities for the
day.
Another experience that
I was able to be a part of at DPA was when I was approached by one of my
mentors, Ms. Griffie to help coordinate the Family Learning Breakfast. This event was geared at bringing in family
members such as parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents to talk about the
importance of Reading and Writing. I
have a strong background in teaching reading to early elementary students so
this experience was a great opportunity to showcase my leadership skills. I gave a presentation to about 30 DPA family members
for about 45 minutes on the developmental milestones of reading and how they
could help their children excel. I spoke
on the significance of reading with their children and how hearing their voice
could teach them fluency and comprehension.
I also helped Mrs. Henry with the writing portion by adding information
about the milestones of writing. She was
very appreciative of my knowledge in the k-2 writing area because that is not
her expertise. I was able to talk about
the doodling that seems pointless but it stands for the beginning of a
story. I went on to go through the steps
of development of writing while tying it all back to reading because without
the knowledge of basic phonics and phonemic awareness, neither reading nor
writing can happen. This was a wonderful
experience in which I was able to use my leadership skills to showcase my
educational expertise.
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