Final Reflection

As I’m closing in on my last two weeks of internship I look back with tremendous gratitude as I realize how much I’ve learned and how much more confident as a teacher I have become. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I walked in to that unfamiliar kindergarten class on that late August day at Cheney Elementary. I had 21 not-so-talkative little humans staring at me somewhat dumbfounded by my introduction activity. While I expected to gain valuable experience in implementing the things I learned from my education courses, what I didn’t expect was the more truly learning experience I gathered from the daily intricacies inherent in teaching in a classroom with a child with behavioral/social issues.

I will refer to him as J.C. – an intelligent five year old boy with a dazzling smile and wide blue eyes that sparkle. He was switched to my class two weeks in to my internship and came to us with almost daily infractions including hitting the teacher and other students. It wasn’t too long after he entered our class that I was able to see firsthand how to handle a volatile child like JC. JC began to kick and shout and throw things off his desk when he didn’t get his way. My supervising teacher quickly rushed over and knelt to his level and with a stern tone of voice said, “It is o.k. to be mad, it is not o.k. to kick.” This quickly defused his anger down to a whine, and before I knew it, he had regained his composure. I realized that my teacher used a technique in which she acknowledged the validity of the emotion behind the behavior, but condemned the behavior – an element pertinent to proper emotional and social development.

Throughout my internship I tried my best to emulate my supervising teacher and help JC replace negative behaviors with positive behaviors. This was no easy task. My teacher once told me with regards to dealing with his behavior, “you have to have nerves of steel,” and often looked at me after reprimanding JC and said, “consistency, consistency, consistency”. At times he left me feeling frazzled – having to correct and redirect his behavior countless times throughout the day and dealing with his volatile temperament could be exhausting.

During this internship I have been reading The First Days of School, How to be an Effective Teacher by Harry K. and Rosemary T. Wong. In this book is a concept by Madeline Hunter which states, “Repetition is the Key” that says, “For a child to learn something new, you need to repeat it an average of eight times. For a child to unlearn an old behavior and replace it with a new behavior, you need to repeat the new behavior an average of 28 times. Twenty of those times are used to eliminate the old behavior, and eight of the times are used to learn the new behavior.” I believe JC is a shining example of this. Although there were times when I thought I was going to “lose it”, it is all worth it in the end to see the vast improvement he has made. He has done a complete 180. These days he’s hugging classmates and asking nicely for things and his angry outbursts are minimal. It is truly a gratifying feeling to know that I contributed to this change, and so I leave this internship with a sense of accomplishment and success.