My Experience At Lambertville Academy - 1537 Words

I did my summer fieldwork at Lambertville Academy in Lambertville, NJ, where I observed a Pre-K class. All of the students in this class will be moving on to Kindergarten in September. I’m grateful for the things I learned and the time I spent in this placement. My time at Lambertville Academy allowed me to better understand the theories taught in the early childhood education class I took, as well as myself and my goals as a future educator. This fieldwork gave me the chance to actualize the role of child development in early childhood education, a central topic to the class I took. I saw this when observing the varying levels of development of the children, cognitively and socially. One particular memory that sticks with me was when I†¦show more content†¦She was also well spoken and could follow directions well. It was interesting to see such a stark contrast in the development of the children in this class. There were students like Brooke in this class, and there were also students like the girls who played the memory game with her, students who could not control their bodies or their actions, and students whose speech was nearly incomprehensible. The importance of the hidden curriculum of school and learning social etiquette stuck out to me in this placement. Though there was a range of development in the class, and some students proved to understand proper social etiquette more than others, many children were not aware of social etiquette and were not fully able to control their bodies and emotions. I noted that many times the children would try to run around or move however they like and talk out of turn without realizing that that is not socially acceptable and that there are consequences for doing so. The teacher would often say, â€Å"no thank you, ______† to the student that was displaying behavior that was unacceptable. I liked that she would praise students publicly for good behavior, saying things like â€Å"I like the way that Maggie is sitting up, looking at me, and keeping her hands to herself.† Something else that stuck out to me when examining the social environment of the class was the emergence o f a clique that my cooperating teacher pointed out to me one day during outdoor play time. She