Zoe Karp

 

For my entire life, I’ve known that teaching and working with little kids is something I’m not only passionate about, I’m also really good at. Since the summer of 2018, I’ve worked at Summers at LREI, in classrooms with students ages 3-6, and assisting in choice classes with students 7-12. I’ve only ever been in classroom settings in summer camps, where the goal is more to have fun than to learn. When thinking about what to do for a senior project, I knew that working in a classroom would be the perfect thing for me because it would provide me with the experience of observing a setting where the goal is more academic. So far, 6 and 7-year-olds have been my favorite age to work with, so 1st-grade seemed like the right choice. 

For 3 weeks, I will be working in a 1st-grade classroom at LREI with Tammy Dunn. For the other 3 weeks, I will be working at Stephen Gaynor School, a school that offers individualized education for students with learning differences.

My biggest learning goal is to understand how teachers change their behaviors in different situations, whether that’s about students with learning differences, or about resources that the school provides. My specific guiding questions are: How does pedagogy differ in classrooms directed to different demographics of students or schools? How much does day-to-day change in different classrooms? 

My more personal goals are to embrace the independence that this project provides. I always tend to try to work with other people when I’m doing things like this, and even though I’ll be working with a team of teachers, the analysis and research I do will be autonomous. My other biggest goal is to focus on the bigger picture ways classrooms work, as when I’m in classrooms, I tend to focus more acutely on my individual relationships with students.

The buckets I’m going to fill are academic, experience, and service. For the academic bucket, the main focus will be the comparison of the pedagogy. Hopefully, I’ll come away with a better understanding of teaching styles and ways that teachers work with students to set them up for success the most. I’ll also be doing readings of foundational pedagogical texts. For service, I’m going to give back to the school community by continuing the club I’ve been working on, Study Buddies. Moving forward with the club, we have two options: either to transfer our resources to LREI’s middle school, where we can meet in person with students, or continue working with PS 369, and work towards meeting in person with the 3rd graders there. Either way, I’ll end up spending time each week tutoring students and facilitating the logistics.  For the most part, I think experience is the most self-explanatory, I’ll be able to fully involve myself in a classroom setting. 

I think the biggest measure of success I can imagine for the end of this project is feeling more confident working with students of all different abilities. I’ll have a more foundational understanding of what teaching actually means, through reading and observations, and I’ll feel like I’ll have the skills I need to step into practical classroom environments.