My Middle School Teaching Experience

During the winter term of 2008, I did my student teaching in the middle school setting. I felt the experience was a complete success. My cooperating teacher was helpful and let me have the freedom to make small changes in the classroom. This allowed me to help the students learn using my own teaching strategies. Through my cooperating teacher’s guidance, I was able to teach a unit on Ratios, Rates, and Proportions. She also helped me understand more about classroom management. I enjoyed all three classes of students and found each class had their own unique personality. There were very few problems during the term with behavior. I started each day with an entry assignment, which kept the students busy right from the start of the class.

I brought in some of my own personal items during our lesson on scale factor. We talked about the scale factor of a record album versus a compact disk. This gave students a first-hand experience of the difference in the size of the record compared to the compact disk. We talked about how the record had twelve songs on it while the compact disk held thirty songs. Next, we talked about the semi-truck I drove in the past. I showed them a model of the truck, which was ten inches long. We compared this to the actual truck, which was seventy feet long. We found the scale factor of the model compared to the actual truck and discussed how the actual truck was longer than two of the classrooms in the school.

For the final task during the unit, we conducted an experiment of how fish and wildlife officials determine how many fish are in a lake. This experiment was called “Capture/Recapture.” We used beans in a bowl as our lake, with brown beans as the marked fish and white beans as the unmarked fish. This worked well for the experiment and students worked in teams to collect their data. Each student recorded the data on their own worksheet and completed the calculations on their own. After they estimated how many fish (beans) were in the bowl, they wrote about the steps needed for the fish and wildlife officials to determine how many fish are in a lake.

During the term, I learned about classroom management and teaching methods in mathematics. I sat in on every staff meeting to learn how administration and teachers establish curriculum. I worked with the mathematics team as they drafted a mathematics placement test for all incoming sixth grader. This gave me additional experience in connecting the state standards with curriculum. I will be able to use this experience in my future school.

Student teaching in the middle school is another verification that I belong in teaching. My passion for teaching has become even stronger since then. I am thankful to have had a great principal, cooperating teacher, and support from all the teachers in the school. Without their support and open-armed acceptance into their world, my middle school teaching experience would not have been as successful.