Intern Year: Fall 2013: Week 14

       It has been a big change to go from teaching full time to giving some of my responsibilities back to now hardly teaching at all.  I almost feel lost, because I got myself in a routine of writing lesson plans and teaching.  However, I see the importance of the mentor teacher taking teaching back a little at a time.  It works for both of us to get us used to the change.
With the semester coming to a close, I actually feel like I am on track with completing all of my assignments.  However, the only class that has been extremely stressful in the past few weeks is one of my special education courses.  I feel that it was a very unorganized course and we were not provided with the guidance that we should have been.  This worries me, because it is my life and education along with the other interns that are being affected.  There are three professors of the course, but it seemed that they were not on the same page as what needed to be completed and what was expected of the class.  I feel like this was a great disservice to us, because we are now dealing with the backlash of the class.  I am hoping in the future and next semester the special education internship is more organized and that our professor plays more of a role in mentoring us and providing us with the guidance for the assignments for the class at the beginning of the semester.
This was the last week that I implemented my inquiry study, and I was so happy with the end results!  My student improved his reading ability greatly!  I believe the individual attention and individual intervention strategies were beneficial to the student, because they were based on his needs and ability.  This demonstrated to me that in my future teaching, it will be so important that I create strategies, methods, and interventions that focus solely on my student and their individual needs.  Even though he was receiving special education services for reading, they were not tailored to his individual needs enough.  I now also see the importance of making sure students do not just get pushed through the grades and to make sure teachers take responsibility to provide students with the interventions they need.  I hope that as a special educator in the future, I will be able to work with general educators on individualizing content, assignments, and interventions in the classroom so that the students receive content that meets their needs and so they are not getting pushed through to the next grade.