One thing I really like about being an education major here at Gannon is that you have the opportunity to begin fieldwork as early as your freshman year.
In fact, Gannon requires me to have more field work hours than the Pennsylvania Department of Education does so I am more prepared for student teaching and eventually a teaching job.
So far, I have taught an entire unit, taught lessons at three different schools, supervised children outside the classroom setting, helped out on a science field trip location, and plenty more. I have done a lot as an education major, and I am sure I will do plenty more once I student teach next semester.
When I student teach, I am going to teach several units for the first time. I will get to know what it is like to be a full time teacher for one semester. It seems like I am going to need plenty of resources so I could teach to the best of my ability. Luckily, I found a place where I could borrow resources for free.
One service opportunity I am doing is volunteering at the School of Education resource room where there are plenty of resources for education majors. My job is to help clean it, organize the books, record which books are located there on the iPads (This is what I do the most) and whatever else is required of me.
After a few days of volunteering there, I realized that there are plenty of educational items I could borrow bring into a field placement or student teaching.
There are plenty of items that could help decorate a classroom. For example, there is a paper cutter, that allows us to cut colored paper for classroom decoration or activities. There are also bulletin board boarders and paper we could borrow. In the past, I have been required to make bulletin boards for my field work, and I wish I knew about this earlier so I could have had an easier time decorating.
Most people just know about the laminator in the resource room. There are plenty of educational DVDs, books full of activities and even a pocket chart. In a couple of my earlier education classes, we went on a field trip to the teacher store Teaching Touches to see all of the classroom materials we could use in our classroom for functional purposes, decoration related to what we are learning, and supplemental materials to use with a lesson. I realized that I found a few of the same materials in the resource room.
There are also several books related to language arts which I will likely borrow when I plan my first unit as a student teacher.
When I was a freshman and sophomore, I was a little worried about acquiring materials for my student teaching. I was not sure what I would do for the unit and lesson plans. Now I think I will be okay with this. I am going to be a teacher.
