I already have a pretty good feeling that this field placement is going to be a bit better for me than my last one was at Corcoran. First, I, as well as the group that was with me, met the principal, Lynette Francis. She is really nice and has a lot of energy. A few days ago, in my ADO class, a fellow student said that she would have liked to have had Ms. Francis as a teacher, and I can agree. It is quite obvious that she cares a great deal about the students and has even built relationships with some of them. For example, she saw one male student in the hallway and asked him if “they” won last night, referring to a sports team. Obviously, she finds interests that the students have and then uses those interests to attempt to connect to the students, which is a very good quality for a teacher to have.
My Practicum teacher is a nice enough person, but I don’t really like her teaching methods. She seems to treat her classes as units, not as groups of individuals. She seems to do very little to connect to her students; she instead gives them instructions and then leaves them be. She doesn’t know the students yet, since it’s only the second week of school, and that probably has a lot to do with it, but like I said, she doesn’t really seem to make a big effort to get to know them.
About a week ago, I spoke to Sara Blaney of Residence Life and Housing, whose office is in Waterbury, and I told her that I was doing my Practicum at Henninger, and she wished me luck, telling me that it was a rough school. I can definitely see where she was coming from, but it really isn’t too bad at all. When I introduced myself to the teacher’s first class, the class seemed very interested. They asked me a lot of questions. That made me very happy. They are fairly well-behaved. Some of them are late to class, but they aren’t too noisy, and they are engaged in the activities. Apart from having to get up at 6:00, I think that I might actually enjoy this a bit.