Reflection 11: Evolution of Planning

Things have become a lot easier in terms of planning from the beginning of my internship
to now. At UNR, we were encouraged, and I always pushed myself, to create wholly new lesson
and unit plans, and when I transitioned into the internship where there was already a well-
established curriculum to follow it was really hard for me at first to just do the lessons that
were already provided. I started to create these parallel lesson plans because I felt like each
lesson should be my own. Over time, I realized that I needed to use the support that was already
there for me and just modify it to fit my new ideas and the needs of the students. The daily and
weekly planning from there actually became a lot easier. I needed less time to develop the lesson
itself and had more time to create materials, plan transitions, and focus on classroom
management, which all around made my classes and my time at school more manageable. As for
rehearsal, this is something I normally just do it in my headwalk through every step of the
lesson. I have never physically rehearsed a lesson plan unless it involves an experiment.
I still have to focus a lot of time on classroom management strategies, some of my middle
schooler are pretty unrulyand there are a lot of kids who refuse to work with each other
(usually based off gender) that they have been allowed to deny up to this point. I absolutely do
not tolerate I dont want to work with a boy/girl stuff. Mr. Terry and I team teach all of the
time and I model how to work with the opposite sex on a daily basis and they will do the same
when they become professionals, therefore they will do the same in my classroom.
 Free Write: Diversity Events

This week we were able to celebrate 3 different international holidays in our school:
Halloween, Dia de los Muertos, and Loy Krathong.
For Halloween, the students all dressed up in costumes, even middle and high
schoolersthought eh participation was a little less. The ECC and Elementary students went
trick-or-treating to each of the classes across the campus and at the end of the day, the school had
a Halloween fashion show where each of the students who dressed in a costume could show off
all of their hard work and creativity. The class (grade level) with the best turn out won a pizza
party and the class with the most creative costumes won an ice cream party. The school had a
Halloween banner and the lunch room was decorated in pumpkins and bats and had an
information board about the origination of Halloween and how it is celebrated in the U.S.
Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) was celebrated on Nov. 2nd. The middle and high
school Spanish classes created an altar in the lunch area filled with pictures of past celebrities,
leaders, family members, and pets with candles, food offering (apples and oranges) as well as
information about What is the Day of the Dead? and how it is very different from Halloween.
At the lunch hour, the Spanish class passed out cookies and candy while students created a sticky
note wall on the back of the altar of people they missed and remembered in their lives. They also
passed out Dia de Los Muertos calavera masks, which the elementary students in particular
appreciated.
At the end of the week, the Thai culture classes in middle and high school put on Loy
Krathong (The Winter Lunar calendar celebration in Thailand and other Buddhist nations) by
having a Thai costume contest for students and teachers and having student create banana trunk
water lanternswhich was also a competition as each lantern was ornate and delicately created.
The students held an assembly to discuss the origins of this local festival as reflect on the
important symbolism of the event. Later that night, families gathered around the Ping river and
released their water lanterns to honor the goddess of the river and release sky lanterns to the
spirit temples for good merit. A lovely celebration.
This has been one of my favorite weeks of the internship, feeling really a part of the
international community by sharing traditions from a various backgrounds and seeing people
from all walks of life participating in each others holidays. This is exactly what I pictured when
I wanted to teach abroad.