How lessons create experiences~

I can't believe we have finished fieldwork! I must say, I have learned so much and gained a great experience. I have observed in classrooms plenty of times and worked one on one with students. But, nothing compares to being up in front of the classroom and teaching a whole class. It is very intimating but it is a great feeling. This was my first time so it was all completely new for me! What's even better is teaching students and having them really understand and enjoy the lessons that you have worked so hard on. I don't think theres any better feeling! It really shows that your hard work has payed off! The students we got to work with were excellent in every single way. They were always so ready to learn new things and so engaged! This experience has really taught me so many things that you cannot learn from a textbook. I really learned the importance of collaborating and working together. It can be hard at times but it is so crucial. Working together is the best way to get things done and creating lesson plans has really showed me that. Collaborating can make a task much easier and you can get a different perspective and more insight from other people. Through this experience I got to learn what things work and what doesn't work in classrooms. One of the biggest struggles I personally faced being up in front of the classroom was my academic language. I am so used to saying "guys" and I worked so hard to try and take that out of my vocabulary! Academic language is so important and many people seemed to struggle with it. But, I think I really got a handle on it and was able to use correct academic language. It is very hard to try to break a habit or something you are so used to doing/saying. I tried to control myself in every situation so I could try to take it out of my vocabulary completely so that it would not be an issue!Another important thing that I learned from fieldwork was that not every student learns in the same way and not every strategy works for all. While creating lessons plans you have to think about every student and make adjustments based on different students. It is really important that you fit the need of every student in the class. Fieldwork has really opened my eyes to that and I got to see the differences in how students learn. This experience has also made me so much more comfortable with creating lesson plans. I am a junior and I have been creating lessons plans for quite some time. But, this has given me the chance to create a lesson plan, teach it, and then adjust it if needed. It was an experience that I am fortunate enough to have. Dr. Smirnova assigned us another task where she asked us to make edits to a personal copy of our lesson plan. It was really helpful because although we created the lesson plan with our group, we got the opportunity to personalize it and make it our own. So, if something happened during one of my lessons that I did not particularly like or don't think went so smoothly I changed it in my lesson. This gives us all a chance to make the lesson plan more personalized to each of us. Overall, I am ecstatic that I got the chance to be a part of such a wonderful experience. The 2nd grade class we taught was so great in every way possible. I'm sad that the end of fieldwork approached so quickly!