Internship 2/4 - Introduction to 7th Grade!

NEW SEMESTER... 

NEW INTERNSHIP...

7TH GRADE HERE WE GO!

This past Tuesday I started my new semester-long internship at a middle school! I have been placed in a 7^th grade social studies classroom, and I get the privilege to go there three days a week for the rest of the semester! I am so excited to get to know these new students and to help them learn and further their education.

My first day I was in their classroom was a bit of an abnormal day because they had an adjusted and shortened schedule. Usually, I will be observing two social studies hours and a 20-minute study hall, instead today I observed an ELA (English Language Arts) class along with the normal two social studies hours. This was fun for me because I have never gotten to observe an ELA class before! After the ELA hour, I got to meet the two normal social studies classes I will be with all semester. Immediately I noticed how much different they were from the 6^th graders I was working with last semester! The 7^th graders were a lot more outgoing and not as shy as the 6^th graders, especially with interacting with the teachers and gently challenging them or speaking out of turn. I also noticed that the 7^th graders are more prone to not listening, disobeying, getting distracted, and are all around rowdier than the 6^th graders. Although this may sound like negative attributes, to me it just felt like more of a fun challenge and environment, and it meant I will have to work harder which I don’t mind at all! And because of the 7^th graders are more outgoing and talkative this means that they are also funnier and tend to create a very fun learning environment, and when it comes time to work almost all of them do so still.

During their actual class time today, the students were silently working on peer-reviewing their classmates’ political cartoons on the subject of Bleeding Kansas. There wasn’t much for me to help with or observe because they were simply silently working the whole hour, so I took this time to get to know their teacher and all about their classroom procedures and etiquette.

All in all, today was a great introduction to this new class, teacher, and semester! I am very excited to start working and learning from this class, and I am so excited for what this coming semester will bring!