My name is Daniel Barnes and I am a second-semester senior (or Senior II) in the Teaching Fellows Program. For the next few months, I will be updating my progress and reflecting on the experience of “Senior II.”
I am a Secondary English Education major interning at Roanoke High School in Robersonville, which is about 30 minutes away from Greenville in Martin County. A typical day consists of waking up at 5:30 A.M., preparing for school, leaving my apartment at 6:50, arriving at Roanoke at 7:25, and teaching from 8:00 A.M. until 3:10 P.M. The conclusion of the student school day does not signify the end of the teacher’s day, though. Usually, my clinical teacher and I are involved with tutoring sessions, faculty meetings, workshops, and planning for the upcoming week. We usually leave school at 4:30 P.M. unless we have parent-teacher conferences or a ballgame. Then, after arriving home at 5:00 or so, I spend approximately an hour on either grading papers or developing lessons.
The transition from a predominately class-based schedule to an exclusively internship-based routine has been easy. Instead of returning from a one-day a week internship and worrying about 13 hours of courses, the Senior II experience allows me to focus on what I want to do and plan. I’m learning more this semester about how to teach, rather than what to teach. As an English major, most of my classes have been content-based, i.e. reading and writing about collegiate-level literature. Now, my education has changed “directions.” Typically, college classes teach you, the college student, and give you the opportunity to show the professor what you know (and remembered). The internship allows me to apply what I have learned in a way that forces me to think about the subject content in ways that are more enjoyable than traditional classes. Think about this: when you read books in college, your typical assessment consists of writing about a professor-designed topic and regurgitating information that you were supposed to have remembered. In high school, however, I can determine how much students have learned about a protagonist by assigning a “body biography,” which is a human-sized drawing of a character that is filled with symbolic and textual representations of that character’s traits and personality.
Of all things I’ve learned thus far, the most important one is that “you get out what you put in.” Even when I spend extra time at school and extra time planning, I thoroughly enjoy working at school and with students when I have planned fun activities in detail. Undoubtedly, this has been my favorite semester in college – and I owe much of it to my awesome clinical teacher, Mrs. Shannon Hill, who provides me with thorough, constructive advice. I can’t help but give a little advice – develop a strong relationship with your clinical teacher. Luckily, it was very easy for me to develop a friendship with my clinical teacher and the entire staff at Roanoke. Next time I will move on to specific events to reflect upon. If you have any questions or concerns about the Senior Experience, email me at dmb0322 (at) ecu.edu.
