Mathematics Teaching Degree WGU -in progress!

[teacher2]

Hey Everyone! I passed my last WGU class for the year!!! I made my goal of completing all my courses besides student teaching in one term!!! That and in the nick of time as I only have 3 days left to my term.

So here is my experience in the Pre-Clinical Experiences course. In this course you do not have any required reading, cohorts, or other instructional material. The class has one performance task which is composed of multiple facets. In my task, I had to answer a number of specific writing prompts about my observations as well as reflect on those observations. Also I had to include the following:

Observation Log
Active Engagement Log
Teacher Interview Form
Teacher and Students Observation Form
Field Notes (This is what your writing prompts and Reflection essay is based on)

In total, my task submission was 72 pages long. I was in this class for 26 days of which 10 days I was observing a 7-8th grade math classroom in a local school. Fall break landed after my first week of observations so it gave me plenty of time to write about my observations up to that point.

In order to do my PCE class, I contacted the board of education in my area and met with the director who secured a placement for me. If you already have connections established in a local school, then you probably could contact them. The private school I had volunteered and subbed at a year ago had shut down and I am a homeschooled student so I had virtually no connections.

`In any case, this class requires you to observe 60hrs (if you were enrolled before 8/17) or 75 hours (if you enrolled after 8/17). I completed 60.38 observation hours and 24.5 active engagement hours. Because of my limited time frame to get this class done, I was there at the school observing math classes from 7:45am-3:00pm. Not all of those hours counted as observation hours. I could include all math classroom and instructional planning hours but lunch break, morning breaks, or other activities could not be counted. Also even if the school is holding a afterschool program such as reading, WGU will not count this toward your hours because it falls outside of "school hours" . However, the funny thing is if a morning break falls during a class period ( The teacher begins lesson, then takes students for morning break, then comes back in and resumes lesson) you can include that time in your observation hours! Do not list it separately but add it to the time of the class period that it occurred in. This will make sense if you take this class!

Also, every observation MUST be a minimum of 45 minutes or they will not count it toward your hours. They provide a loop-hole to this requirement if you were actively engaged in assisting the students/teacher. If you are actively engaged it does not matter if you were only helping for ten minutes, they will count it.

How difficult was the class? It was more on the difficult side due to the many components and requirements. I felt completely useless the first couple of days as all I was doing was watching the class and taking notes. Sitting for 6 hours a day feels like eternity! After the teacher got comfortable with me being there, I was allowed to assist the students, teach lessons, and help grade papers. The next hardest thing was figuring out what hours counted. I am usually very independent when I work on WGU courses, but seeing as this was a class I could not go back and re-observe, I emailed my course mentor frequently to check if I had these hours right. My task was actually sent back for revision because I had excluded a morning break which meant part of the lesson I observed was 15 minutes long. They would not count this toward my hours till I changed the log to make my minutes consecutive.

For the teacher interview, I recommend not asking all the questions WGU requires you to ask in one sitting! I asked the questions one or two at a time during lunch hour, break, and the instructional planning period.

Lastly, for the reflection essay, be sure that your writing includes not just what happened but WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE. When I talked with the course mentor, she told me that many times the task gets sent back because people merely repeat what happened. The reflection Essay has multiple components but they give you a checklist of areas you are supposed to observe which will help you write this. Use this checklist to guide your field notes and observations which will help you write the essay.

This task was the largest and most complicated I have taken through WGU up to this point. I highly recommend working with the course mentors as they are your best resource on this one. Not to mention, they are your only resource!