Teaching and nursing are two careers that equally appeal to me. I am drawn to both, and have a strong family history in both lines of work. Unsure which profession I want to ultimately work towards after high school, I set out to find an answer. My goal was to use my senior project as a tool to help me decide between the two. Being more familiar with nursing, I thought it would be a great idea to gain more experience in the world of teaching, and I could not have chosen a better project! This project gave me insight into my future as a teacher and taught me invaluable skills through hands-on work in the classroom. For the last 14 weeks, I have been volunteering in Mrs. Dethman’s 2nd grade classroom at Mid Valley Elementary School on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings for about 3 hours, give or take. During my time in the classroom, I did a variety of work both directly involving the students, and …show more content…
I only observed for the first week, so I could learn how the teacher run’s her classroom, and get used to the environment. After that, I moved on to simple tasks like grading math assessments, reading homework, and in-class workbooks, as well as taking down and putting up bulletin boards with student work, making copies, and preparing art materials for upcoming projects. The teacher then introduced me into non-academic activities that directly involved the students. This included coloring, glittering, and assembling fun projects with the kids. Each month they get a new themed coloring sheet to complete. I helped them color the image, cut around the border, glue it onto colored construction paper, attach their name label, and hang it up. We also did projects like crafting a turkey, a pilgrim and Indian, a Christmas tree, and a snowflake. These projects