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Diana Miculescu
Reflection Paper
EDCI 6600
1 July 2018
The alternate teaching experience at Coretta Scott King Young Women’s Leadership
Academy of Summer 2018 was an eye-opening experience in teaching in an urban setting as well
as teaching upcoming middle level students. This experience had its ups and downs, but the
outcome that displayed the students’ achievement of goals set out in the beginning encouraged
me. Even though there might have been many moments when teaching seemed difficult, the
students were determined to accomplish that overall goal. I enjoyed this experience since it was a
summer school camp and the students were more laid back than if it occurred in a more formal
I believe the setting played an enormous part in my experience there, as well as the
students who attended the school. My initial thoughts were first, that the campus and building
were beautiful and welcoming. The outdoor garden in front of the school was an unspoken
testament to the type of school I was entering—a school dedicated to hands-on, real-world
learning activities. Secondly, the hallways were dressed in quotes inspiring women to be unique,
determined, and impactful at school and in their communities. I believe schools have power in
influencing students and the way in which the school delivers itself to its students can foster
Before I stepped on CSKYWLA’s campus, the class was tasked to develop a research
question and goal for the students. We were given a lot of freedom regarding what the students
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needed to accomplish and how they were going to spend their time each week to achieve their
goal. Group 4, which I was a part of, included two students as well as another student teacher
(who later dropped the course and was no longer part of the teaching experience). Our research
topic was “Beginning and Maintaining a School Recycling Program” and the research question
was “How can we implement and maintain a school recycling program?”. The research goal for
our students was for students to be able to determine which items can be recycled and what are
Regarding the goals we expected the students to achieve, I believe the students exceeded
our expectations in creating presentations that so clearly defined the research process, including
different aspects of research such as background information and how it relates to the real-world,
the problem/question, the solution, and the sources as evidence of their research. One reason we
might have had lower expectations was because the experience and progress during the one hour,
once a week meeting time we had with the students was not as productive as we thought
necessary to the students to complete the final presentation. Many times, I felt the students were
drifting off task by pulling out a phone or even pulling up and looking at past assignments in
their Google Drive. The informal setting, time management skills, and student’s disinterest to the
task may have discouraged the students from completing the work with eagerness.
I also learned that students will not always be eager or interested in a topic or task that is
taught, and some deviations need to be made depending on how the students are responding to
the content and task. This requires the teacher to be flexible in a sense and to remember the
overall goal is to have students learn. The overall goal is not for students to complete a specific
assignment, because the assignment is only the path that the students take to learn the
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information. If the path set out by the teacher is not compatible with the student, the teacher
Initially, I had planned for students to form their own research process on their own, but
as soon as I saw they might benefit with a more structured lesson plan, I put together a research
task in which the students had to answer questions that they could later on use as background
information, identifying the problem, and planning a solution to their research topic. In
retrospect, I should have been more aware of pre-assessing my students in the beginning to be
prepared even sooner with a more structured lesson. This obstacle showed me that lesson
planning needs to be extremely intentional not only to the final goal, but it depends heavily on
the students’ prior knowledge, feelings, and assumptions about a subject, and their understanding
about what might be a problem regarding the research topic and how this relates to themselves
personally and to the school. All the research topics provided to the students were actual real-
world learning experiences in which students can involve themselves in what they were learning.
As rising sixth graders, since my students researched this topic, in the following school year they
will be more knowledgeable about maintaining a recycling program at the school as well as
My time at CSKYWLA further validated that teaching students is something I not only
desire to do, but that I am called to teach as well. This experience should me how easily I can
relate to the students I come in contact with because I am learning from them just as much as
they are learning from me. Even with time constraints or content and skills issues, the students
persevered through the weeks to create an impressive presentation for their final project. This
experience gives me confidence and optimism for future teaching experiences. I have learned to
not get discouraged so easily when students veer off task, even when time is limited. The truth is
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that the reality of the constraints present in a certain learning environment will become obvious
and it is the teacher’s responsibility to become aware, manage, and adapt to such constraints.