Last Thursday was our first practicum experience in AED210.  All of the teams went to Our Lady of Lourdes to teach our first lessons.  I don’t know about anyone else, but I was EXTREMELY nervous!  I knew we had prepared for it, I knew our lesson plan was strong and that our unit was exciting, but I was still extremely jittery.  I really couldn’t explain why though… I work with children on a regular basis and I am completely comfortable with them.  When I walk into “my” classroom at St. Joe’s I’m at home and I’m excited to get started with the tasks for the day.  It’s not to say I wasn’t excited about being at Lourdes, because I was, but part of me was dreading stepping foot in that classroom and having to take charge.  It was really the strangest feeling!

            Jamie and I rode together from the Mount and we talked about how we were going to introduce ourselves since I was the main teacher for the day but it was also our first day and the kids needed to get to know Jamie and Rachael as well.  On the way there we realized we hadn’t packed any paper in our supplies bag, immediately following that realization there was an emergency text sent out to Rachael whom we were hoping and praying would still be at home… phew!  She was still home and she had grabbed a stack of computer paper.  Jamie and I were the first to arrive at Lourdes and we were 15min early, but we were warmly welcomed by the secretary and we signed in and wrote out our name badges.  We sat outside the office, Jamie trying to talk to me and me trying not to talk at all… within 5min Rachael arrived.  We ran through things one more time and in the process realized I had left the book I was going to be reading from in Jamie’s van… save number two of the day for Rachael!  At this point I was SO glad we were in teams, otherwise I would have been a COMPLETE basket case.

            After everyone else showed up and the kids switched classes it was time for us to start… somewhere between walking into the classroom and the first words coming out of my mouth I found my comfort zone… from then on out it was smooth sailing!  I loved this experience; it was great for me to work with kids that are very different from the inner city children I have daily exposure to.  The difference between Lourdes and St. Joe’s (as two private Catholic schools) was just astounding to me… but I loved the kids and I felt comfortable with them and I am really very excited about continuing our unit with them next Thursday!  This will help me in my future career as a teacher because I think it will be easier for me to get through the “first day jitters” now… the nervousness of not knowing the kids that will walk through my door and having a whole new set of brains to engage won’t be nearly as frightening for me since I have done this practicum.  The experience as a whole will, in conjunction with everything else I am being exposed to here at the Mount, supplement my own personal desire to teach and drive to be better in more ways than I can possibly imagine now as a sophomore.

            I work at St. Joseph School, downtown Cincinnati, through the work study program here at the College of Mount St. Joseph.  I chose to go to St. Joe’s for this AED 210 (Art Experiences for Children) class assignment because I love our art teacher Elaine Hoblik and I wanted to see how she handled her classroom.  When I arrived at school at 7:00 this morning Mrs. Hoblik was downstairs in the cafeteria greeting and monitoring the students as they arrived off the bus or with parents.  As they waited for their teachers to come and pick them up the students chatted happily with one another and visited with friends.  A small group of kindergarten students came up to Mrs. Hoblik and I and excitedly asked their teacher if they were going to be continuing work on their abstract pieces from the previous day.  It was great to see how excited they were about their work and their excitement really piqued my interest in just what it was that they were working on.

            After morning duty the students are picked up by their teachers and Mrs. Hoblik and I could go upstairs to her classroom and talk briefly about what the classes were working on, what they had already done with the lesson and where they would be going with their final pieces.  Mrs. Hoblik told me that they were doing a unit on abstract art and on thinking outside the box.  She is doing the same assignment with grades K-3 and her daily schedule works out nicely to where she has all grade levels consecutively throughout the day on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s.  I got to see the Kindergarten, First and Second Grade classes.  The children had all gotten their paper the previous day and had drawn their lines.  The lines all had to be moving lines, in other words none of them were allowed to be straight.  Some lines would be crossing each other and some would even run off the page.  When you had your lines down then you were supposed to color in the sections made by the lines.  Whenever two lines crossed each other they were instructed to change the color of the crayon they were using so that there were never two of the same colors together.

            Most of the students were still coloring and Mrs. Hoblik doesn’t tell the students where their projects are going to encourage more creativity so that’s when I asked her what the final outcome was going to be.  She told me that she would be blending this abstract unit with a weaving unit for Easter.  These abstract coloring pages would be cut up in the shape of Easter Eggs and those eggs would then be placed in baskets that the students were going to weave out of construction paper and assemble themselves.  I thought it was a very cute assignment that nicely put together two units of art and a lot of creativity on the student’s behalves as well.

            St. Joseph just continues to influence my views on my future career in more ways than I could have ever possibly imagined.  All of my experiences at the school have taught me something about how I will handle my future classrooms.  I hope to get the opportunity to either teach some art classes or integrate art into my general classes and what I saw today with the overall way Mrs. Hoblik handled her room will help me with those future situations.  While most of what I saw was definitely positive there were some things that I would have done differently had I been running the class.  Mrs. Hoblik would go to a particular student and take their hand in hers and draw the lines on their paper, she sometimes even colored or drew right on a student’s artwork and I didn’t like that.  I don’t think I would ever draw on a student’s artwork.  Another thing that I thought I would handle differently than Mrs. Hoblik was the way she handled the kids’ questions on why they weren’t allowed to have any straight lines, I feel like she didn’t answer their questions in an appropriate manner.  Overall, however, this experience was fun and it will definitely be beneficial to me in my future career.