For my second teaching opportunity I was able to make a really strong connection with a student in the BRC as I worked one on one with him writing a Halloween story. In all honesty, I was nervous to visit this program at Reynolds as I have had very few experiences working with students with special abilities great enough to require full time EAs or an alternative program. While I was eager to learn more about special education I was concerned that I wouldn’t know how to interact with these students in a meaningful way. However, Ms.McIsaac, the teacher in the BRC, made us feel very welcome as she introduced us to the group and included us in all of her opening activities. Reanne and I were able to learn a few things about each person in the room and this made me feel a lot more at ease in this new setting.

            Once our check in had been done, each EA and TRUVic student was asked to work one on one with a student in helping them write a story. The boy I was paired with was very talkative and was eager to tell me more about the BRC program and what they had been working on lately. Through this interaction I was able to understand that he had strong language skills and that while I acted as his scribe in order for him to complete his story more quickly, he was able to form his story with little guidance. In the teacher role, I asked him questions to help guide his thinking and was able to draw his attention to the other resources that had been given to us as inspiration. By checking in with him about which words and prompts stood out, it was clear that he was becoming very engaged in his work as he had complete ownership over the plot of his story.

The story we were working on was certainly creative and he enjoyed answering my questions such as, whether “Wanda the Witch” was a good witch or bad witch, where she lived, what her powers were, what problem she had to solve, and how she would resolve it. I could tell that as I was writing down his ideas he was actively thinking about how the story would progress and was excited to share his next idea as I finished writing down the last. Once our story was complete, we were asked by the teacher to add more adjectives and adverbs, and together we went through the story adding descriptive words to it. While the student I was working with did have the ability to write down his own ideas, the opportunity for him to have me write it down allowed him to focus on his ideas and storytelling, as opposed to spelling and grammar.

Throughout this process I learnt a lot about working one on one with students, as well as ways to question that provoke independent thinking and reflection. While at first I was tempted to tell him what would work best for his story or immediately correct his sentences, I quickly realized it was more beneficial to allow him to tell me the story exactly the way he wanted and to guide him through the editing process after we had recorded the story how he wanted.

Teaching is all about making connections and finding out about your students are interested in and once we were finished with the story, we were able to talk about what he wanted to be when he grew up, how he was enjoying his first few months in high school and how teachers become teachers. I felt that I made a very meaningful connection and that allowed him to feel comfortable enough to share with me his dream to become a police officer in the future and the steps he needed to take in order to reach this goal. He was also very kind in offering me his own words of wisdom as to what makes a good teacher. There is a lot of literature about how to be an effective teacher but it is really interesting to hear what sort of things stand out for students. At the end of our time together he thanked me for helping him and this meant a lot as I could tell that he had had a positive time working on a lesson that he wasn’t initially very excited to do.

Following the lesson there was the opportunity to reflect on the experience with Ms.McIsaac. We were able to check in about the student’s progress, to hear about the program in more detail and to debrief about our experience observing and working in this class. We discussed how important it is for these students to get the one on one support that they need in order to help them to progress through their work and feel confident about their abilities as learners. Overall this was a very positive experience for me as I was able to learn a lot about effectively working with students one on one, as well as make a meaningful connection with a student that allowed him to engage fully in the activity.