the impact of classroom observations on my learning this semester

I'm not your typical Negative Nancy, but this semester's observations were more of a burden than they were worth.  My teacher was absent from school three or four days, but since I was unaware, I made the commute there and back anyways.  Apparently not every school's professors stress professionalism quite as much as the Meredith professors do.  No biggie though in the grand scheme of things.  It was a learning experience.  I have always struggled with having too high of expectations for others, so this experience was just another added to the list to help me maintain more realistic thinking.

On the bright side, observing the reading/writing block this semester in a first grade classroom was a helpful addition to course readings and lecture topics.  Although everything we talked about at Meredith was not exemplified in the elementary school, it was still useful to see a real life application.  I observed lots of guided reading groups, writer's workshop, and interactive writing.  The students journaled and worked on phonics.  I was able to pick out different stages of development of spelling amongst the students  and saw how the students' handwriting differed depending on the stage of learning to write.

I am in part a kinesthetic learner.  Helping students in the classroom with their journal writing was great for me.  However, I wouldn't describe myself anywhere near "learned" enough.  You don't really know how to do something until you actually do it yourself.  So here's to the future and the potential to do great things in language arts instruction.  : )