AEMS Senior Project Weekly Reflection #3


This week was another great week at AEMS.  I’m actually quite disappointed this has been my final complete week at the school because I have really enjoyed the work I have been doing, especially this week.  I started to bring a more silly attitude to the classroom, not one that hinders or distracts them from their learning, but one that tries to make the learning more fun (at the end of the day, the best way to retain information is to have fun doing it.  This actually worked much better than I expected, as the kids laughed a lot and we had a lot of fun together. Just a quick smile or silly face can get the kids to crack up, which instantly strengthened the bond between me and the students. I actually was asked by a few of them if I was having a good day because I seemed so happy (which I was really glad to hear from them!).  At the same time, there were also a couple of challenges this week that we had to deal with. A couple of kids didn’t feel good/got sick, which wasn’t fun. However, what was harder to deal with was a couple of kids had sudden crisis of confidence. For some reason one day a particular student just decided that he thought he was stupid (which is not true). This caused him to totally shut down and not want to do any work, and caused him to second guess every decision that he made.  I’m not quite sure if he was doing it for attention or because something really happened to him, but either way it was upsetting that he saw himself in that way and I had to give him a lot of positive encouragement to get him through the week. This was really challenging but I also feel that I benefited from it because we were able to work through it together and by the end of the week he was starting to gain confidence again. I believe that all of the challenges I have faced at AEMS over the last few weeks have benefited me in same way, and this one was no different.   As always, I really enjoyed everything I have been doing at the school this week. Each connection I make or student I help really makes me smile just as much as it makes them. Those students are all great kids and I have a feeling that they are all going to do great things for the world some day. This week helped me build on my goals in many ways: more raw teaching experience, more challenges, more successes, and more “a-ha!” moments. This has been an amazing senior project and I can’t wait to wrap it up next week with a little more help for the kids (and a sweet surprise for them on Tuesday!).     

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