Clinical Overview

Overall, I feel like our clinical teaching experience went really well. The chapter of the Educational Foundations book we had was Chapter 23, which was entitled "Teacher Unionism Reborn." Starting off, I barely knew anything about unions in general, and even less about teacher unions. After reading the chapter, I was still confused, but I was more educated than before. The chapter was very heavy and filled with lots of details which sometimes made it hard to grasp. But eventually after reading and talking about it, we all picked up on the main points and started to think about what to do with our 50 minute period.

We decided that to start off our lesson, we would do a Post-It Note exercise. We would hand out one sticky note to everyone before we even started talking about the topic. On this piece of paper, they were to write what first came to mind when they heard the words "teacher unions." After they were finished, they were to stick them on one side of the chalkboard. When we read over them, a lot of them had things like "riots," "negative," and "corrupt" on them. Others had things written on them that made it clear to us that, just like we were before reading the chapter, there was some confusion about the topic.

The next thing we did was start going over a PowerPoint. A lot of the period was us just reading straight from it and trying to throw in some additional information off the top of our heads. If I could go back and change anything about our presentation, it would be that we would not just talk so much at the class, but have them participate and be more active in the conversation. Because the topic was so difficult and not a lot of people knew about it, it was something we had to do, so I'm not sure how we could rework our lesson.

Another thing I wish we could go back and change was the video that we showed. We searched hard and long to find an unbiased one, but there were honestly none out there. I feel like the video we showed might have shaped some students' opinions about teacher unions before they were even able to think for themselves. When we chose the clip, we said that our aim with it was to get the class thinking of the pros and cons to the issues that come along with teacher unions, but I feel like it might have done more than that.

Something I think we did really well was the union activity we planned. In the chapter, the author mentioned four main problems and issues that teacher unions have to address. Since there were four tables in the classroom, we thought it would be interesting to give each table an issue. They were to become their own little union and think about what they would want to do with that issue. I believe this got them thinking about the pros and cons that come along with so many different aspects of being an educator and how they would hypothetically fix them. This activity really got them thinking and interacting with each other, not just listening to us lecture them.

I really enjoyed the process of being up in front of a class teaching. In doing this experience, it helped me realize that it is something I could see myself doing for the rest of my life. Even though it was a college classroom with a topic I would not teach about in the future, it was good to see how to plan a lesson, work with your colleagues, and actually go up and teach. I found this to be a very positive experience and I feel with some more hard work and dedication, we could all be fantastic teachers.