Attention All Upcoming Senior II Interns!

by Lindsay Brooke Whitfield (May '08 graduate)

You are just about to partake on a semester journey into another world that you have been waiting 3+ years for. As Teaching Fellows we have attended seminars, participated in committees, attended all summer Teaching Fellows events, and any other activities on campus that we have felt would help us prepare for our future. However, your clinical internship experience is something you could never be prepared enough for.

I have realized that it doesn’t matter how many speakers you hear discuss on a variety of issues that you will encounter in the classroom, how many extra trips you attend to become more culturally educated before entering the classroom, and the high grades you achieved in your general education courses. Your clinical experience will test you. The one thing that you will realize is that no one else will receive the same experience that you will. Your other friends in your major, your Teaching Fellows, or those that have come before you will all receive different experiences. Some of you may be placed in a school with a clinical teacher that you “clash” with; others will have been matched perfectly with their clinical teacher. Some of you will be placed in small rural areas where the poverty level of the students and the community is rather eye opening; others of you will be placed in high attendance level schools where the student to teacher ratio is unbelievable. Some days you will experience heart-warming feelings of compassion towards the students, and sometimes the best feeling you had that day was when you finally wrote that particular student up for ISS. The truth is, you’ve probably already heard this and what I’m saying isn’t any new news to you at all. But once you’re there, at your school, everyday, from beginning to end, you’ll finally face all of these experiences. It is when you realize that you’ve been thrown into the madness that sometimes you wonder why you wanted to be a teacher. It is also when you see a small child smile because you helped him/her with something so small to you but yet it was so difficult for them, or when your high school students hand you a prom picture with a note written on the back that says “To Ms./Mr. _________, I’m going to miss you so much next year,” that you realize how rewarded you are. These are honestly the different joys of a teacher. You never honestly know when you wake up in the morning what to expect in your school day.

You will be told plenty of times that your students cannot affect your day. It doesn’t matter how happy and energized you may be in the morning because who’s to say that every student in your class woke up feeling just as bright as you. There are seldom days in the classroom where every student is having a “great” day. But, that’s also the fun of it; the surprises that each student will throw at you. You never know how your best class will act versus your worst class on a daily basis, or how your favorite students will act versus your not as favorite students. It may be that the new topic/subject you’re introducing that day, or for me, a particular dance step that I choreographed, that you’re extremely excited about doesn’t even seem to excite or motivate your students at all. You will be disappointed some days and then rather impressed others. You will find that being a teacher starts to become a sport where you begin to learn how to predict what will happen next. And this, my friend, is why you’re a Teaching Fellow. I hope that you all enjoy your last semester of college and yet your first semester towards finally becoming the teacher you wanted to be.

Photos from Spring '08

Photos by Elizabeth Helms (rising junior)

School's out! To celebrate, we're going to share some photos from the school year that we didn't get a chance to post during the year. We'll be doing this throughout the summer, probably once a month. This month, we're sharing some photos taken by Elizabeth Helms, rising junior and theater education Teaching Fellow.

Spring is a beautiful time on our campus - the trees and flowers are in bloom, everything is green again, and everyone is smiling. This is a view outside the Austin Building.

Left: Elizabeth went to New York City for her Junior Enrichment activity. The New York City trip is sponsored by the UNC-Chapel Hill program and invites fellows from UNC and from the rest of the state. It's one of the few Junior Enrichment options available over Spring Break. Most Fellows select summer activities for Junior Enrichment because we give up our Spring Break senior year for Senior Orientation.

Right: Elizabeth and fellow rising junior theater education major Alex White take a break from their very busy lives in Messick Theater to pose for a photograph. ECU has very strong but very difficult arts education programs. If you want to teach theater, music, art, or dance, your degree program will be especially hard - but it will also be totally worth it.

Looking forward to Discovery!

By Austin Kestler (rising sophomore)
T-shirt design by Will Mercep (rising sophomore)

As freshmen, we just had our last seminar. It was about appropriate dress for Discovery, the week long Teaching Fellow retreat at the end of the summer that all rising sophomores must attend. We take 11 buses with all 500 Teaching Fellows and tour various schools, universities, and businesses across North Carolina. I'm really looking forward for a chance to meet other members from other colleges. I think we will meld nicely due to our experiences as Fellows. I'm really happy to be in this program and have opportunities like this to get out and sort of screen various working environments. I want to see what its like to live in other sections of the state I grew up in. I haven't been to the mountains or the beach in a long time either, so it will be a fun end to my first year of college.



(Editor's note: these are the graphics for our campus T-shirt. Every TF campus creates a special T-shirt just for Discovery. It tends to become somewhat of a . . . contest. With bragging rights attached for years to come.)

The End of An Era: Spring '08

We're just about done with the year! Officially, exams end tomorrow and graduation is on Saturday, but it's close enough to the end to reflect on a great year for us as ECU students and as Teaching Fellows. We have a lot to be proud of: countless hours of service and tutoring in our community, successful practicums and internships, participation and recognition in other campus activities from musical recitals to honor societies. We traveled to Asheboro, New York City, and Atlanta as part of our program's travel enrichment activities.

Freshman Nieves Villasenor had this to say about this year: "To me, it feels like yesterday that we were new here to East Carolina. It doesn’t feel so long ago that we all met at Camp Don Lee for the Teaching Fellows & Maynard Scholars retreat. I can still remember vividly my first football game at Virginia Tech, running across the opposite side of the football field to my spot after my fellow band members and Teaching Fellow/Maynard Scholar friends had begun the show without me. It’s crazy how these priceless memories have all taken place so quickly within just our time at ECU. It’s gone by so fast, yet so much has happened."

We have a lot to look forward to for next year. We have a full slate of enrichment activities provided by the state for the summer: rising sophomores will go on the Discovery bus trip, rising juniors will participate in Junior Enrichment and Junior Conference, and rising seniors will complete Senior Orientation activities and attend Senior Conference. We have a promising class of incoming freshmen (as always!) and we can't wait to meet them in the fall. We're launching a new committee to work with a new academic outreach program here at ECU, the Pirate Tutoring Center. Many of the secondary education degree programs are undergoing revisions to make our graduates even more competitive and well-prepared, and we're very excited about these opportunities.

If you're joining us in the fall, you're in elite company! We all have fantastic stories of growth, perseverance, and success as a result of this semester. This summer, we'll continue to post some of these stories, chronicling our adventures as Fellows and Scholars - but also as student teachers, travelers, resident advisers, and, of course, college students. We hope you'll continue to follow our adventures as we end one year and begin the next.

- Sarah Wittmer, junior
Communications Committee Co-Chair