Lacey McCalicher – Math Education Internship

My name is Lacey McCalicher and I am interning at Garden Spot High School for secondary math education. I go to Mrs. Crossgrove’s room during an honors pre-calc class for my education internship to learn more about what teaching entails. My job duties include observing the class being run, taking attendance, and grading some papers. When the class has a warm-up quiz, it is usually my job to grade them depending on how many of the students finish them early. On Thursdays, I chose an IXL for the class to work on as their warm-up on Fridays. Lastly, on Fridays, it is also my job to grade the class’ weekly warm-up papers. Occasionally I will also do some small tasks such as printing papers and finding the items that go up on the word wall.

To continue, some larger projects that I have worked on as an educational intern include both a smaller lesson and a bigger lesson, as well as creating two warm-up quizzes. For the small lesson that I taught, I showed the class why the law of cosines works and how it was founded. I believe that this lesson furthered their understanding of triangles and how they can be solved. Furthermore, the larger lesson that I taught was how to verify trig identities. During this lesson, I had to find ways to get the class involved with some of the examples that I gave up on the board. Looking back at previous observations in the classroom, I noticed that while giving notes, Mrs. Crossgrove goes through an example along with writing the steps, so I then tried something different with my lesson by giving the steps first and then looking back to them when going through the example. These small details I feel can really impact a class and how they take in the information that you are giving them. With still being in school, I think a lot about how I might want to be given the information or what I might want to see more of in order to better prepare for tests, which helps me get a better idea of what to give the students.

When it comes to grading, I enjoy seeing a different side of the papers and tests that I myself have once completed. Seeing how other students are thinking about the material is exciting to see on paper rather than hearing them talking about it from the desk next to me. It is a different perspective where you might not always see what thought processes went through their mind, but you can see whether or not they are struggling. Sitting behind a desk and observing also helps you see the different levels of understanding throughout the classroom that you might not be aware of when you are sitting in the class. Moreover, it has been very beneficial to me to observe how the class interacts with Mrs. Crossgrove and each other, especially in classwork where they can talk to each other about their thought processes. Again, hearing the different perspectives while walking around the room is an exciting experience for me because you get to hear the students working out the harder problems and really pushing themselves, and being able to help them along the way is another great experience that comes with the internship.

From this experience, I have developed a better understanding of what a teacher had to think of in order to get the necessary information across to the students in the classroom. This may be thinking of new activities to do or possibly assigning more group work. I have also learned that time is another important factor in teaching because you have to make sure that the students have enough time to comprehend the information that you are giving them, whether they need more time to write the notes or just more time to work on some practice problems in class. In addition, I have developed a new way of thinking when it comes to the classroom that is more based on what would challenge the class, but not make them feel like they are lost. I have to think of more happy mediums that have supported reasoning. Therefore, this internship has influenced my future career goals by getting me more excited about teaching a class of my own one day. I truly enjoyed the process of writing out a lesson plan and talking to the students through their work. This experience has definitely helped me get a better understanding of what this job really entails and I think I would really like to pursue this career.

In conclusion, my education internship with Mrs. Crossgrove’s honors pre-calc class at Garden Spot High School has benefited me greatly. I now understand what you have to think about when assigning work and planning a lesson. While my time so far with this experience has included teaching two lessons and grading papers, I am glad to keep trying new things in this setting in order to continue bettering my understanding of the job. I am now more excited than ever about what my future looks like.