Rachael
Undergraduate
Elementary Education |
Rachael
Undergraduate
Elementary Education |
Ciao! It is so hard to believe that we will be heading home next week already, I wish I never had to leave. My life the past two months has been unbelievable. Everything I have learned, all of the places I have traveled, and all of the people I have met have significantly impacted me. I will absolutely never be the same and I’m so excited to see the opportunities this experience will lead me to after it is complete. Now, I have had an eventful past week that I can’t resist filling you in on, so let's get to it.
Once again, I have to stress how much I love my placement in the International School of Siena. The kids teach me so much every moment I spend with them, filling me with experiences that are helping me grow into a strong teacher candidate. Some of the things I have had the pleasure of teaching them recently include skip counting in maths, classifying different types of animals in their unit of inquiry, and how to pronounce and recognize digraphs (most recently working with the digraph “ow”). Something that I have been really striving to do recently is rely less heavily on powerpoints. For example, their maths curriculum called White Rose provides a given powerpoint consisting of all of the standards I need to cover when teaching. Towards the beginning, I definitely was relying on the powerpoints during my lesson more than I am now. Don’t get me wrong, the powerpoints are great, however I have learned that the more I stray away from it and incorporate lessons with manipulatives, the much better it is for the kids’ understanding. Saying this aloud now, it makes complete sense. However, in Buffalo I feel as though many schools I have been placed in had utilized powerpoints within a lesson constantly, which is probably why I was so used to it. However, with such a young group of kids and with the inquiry-based curriculum, getting them to experiment with manipulatives as much as possible rather than being formally taught is much more favorable for everyone. The kids are so incredibly smart and creative and it has been awesome seeing the ways they work hands-on to problem solve and learn through their own exploration. This will definitely influence me to reflect on how I can use the methods of IB in my future lessons even after my time at the International school. Aside from my adventures at school, I have been having plenty outside of school as well. Brace yourself, I tend to get a bit carried away in my storytelling and go into full detail, so I highly recommend grabbing a snack and getting comfortable. Enjoy! At the beginning of this trip, I had learned of the contrade of Siena. The contrade are communities that the people living in Siena are divided into. It is a symbol of belonging and tradition within the history of families. Each contrada has their own name and animal. One of the girls in my cohort, Kelsey, was invited to a party for her host family’s contrada and her family extended the invitation to the rest of our cohort! Honestly we weren’t sure what to expect going into it, however we were super excited to be a part of it. After being in attendance I can confirm that this contrada knows how to party. There was lots of food, music, dancing, and everyone seemed to be having the time of their lives. It was an honor and an absolute blast getting to participate in this Siena family custom. On Wednesday May 1st, we did not have school because it is Labour Day in Italy. A few girls from our cohort decided to take a day trip to check another thing off the bucket list. We took a train to…drumroll please… Pisa!! We of course had to take our touristy pictures with the leaning tower, however it was a pretty rainy day so we got a bit soaked trying to figure out the perfect angles. On Friday May 3rd, we traveled to Cinque Terre for the weekend. This place was an absolute dream, I am not even exaggerating when I say it literally felt like I was living in a postcard. I will let the pictures speak for themselves, however the colors of the buildings and the blue of the sea was just breathtaking. We stayed in Riomaggiore where we walked around and took a sunset boat tour along the coast where we were able to see all of the towns. We were able to spend some time walking around in Manarola and had a beach day on Sunday in Monterosso. All of this being said, I would be lying to you if I said everything went perfectly on this trip. Kelsey, Orianne, McCartney, and I had quite the adventure trying to get home Sunday night. I’ll set the scene for you: we walk into the train station after a lovely sunny day relaxing on the beach followed by a delicious dinner and gelato, ready to hop on our train to be home and ready for school on Monday. We looked up at the screen to see what platform we needed to go to, only to see the word “CANCELLATO” next to all of the departing trains. We ran straight to the ticket counter, learning that a strike had affected our travel plans home. Luckily, we were able to get new tickets that were able to get us to the closest train station to Siena, however there were no trains going to Siena because of the strike. Orianne’s host dad, bless him, had picked us up and taken us home. We got home around 1am, then we were up and ready to go in the morning for school! We owe him our lives to say the least. I mean, it wouldn’t be as much of an adventure if everything went as planned now would it? Hey no worries, it’s all a part of the Italian experience. OH! I almost forgot! The day before we left for Cinque Terre, I had a crazy experience and spontaneously got my hair done. You may be thinking, getting your hair done couldn’t have been that crazy of an experience right? Well, let me tell you, it was definitely unlike any other time I have been to the hair salon. I contacted my host sister and asked her if there was a specific hair salon she recommended. Shortly after, she had me in contact with her hairdresser, and he does not speak English so we began texting one another using google translate. We planned a consultation for the following day regarding prices and what I wanted to have done. Long story short, he offered to do my hair right then and there while I was at my consultation. There were SO many things that I probably should have taken as a sign that I shouldn’t have said yes. For example, I was all by myself, my phone was about to die and I had no charger, I had absolutely no clue where I was, I had a zoom meeting with our Buffalo State cohort relatively soon, and there was no bus home if I stayed to have it done (I know I know, probably wasn’t one of my wisest moments). However, he said that he was pretty booked for the next few weeks, so who was I to pass up the opportunity to get my hair done in Italy? After explaining I had a zoom meeting, he told me I could come back after it ended, so I put a coffee shop in my apple maps to sit at while in the meeting. Come to find out after walking all the way there, the coffee shop no longer existed. Was this another sign to just head back home instead of getting my hair done? Well if it was, I didn’t take it. I started heading back to where the hair salon was and was able to find a hotel with a cafe a few steps away from the salon where I connected to wifi for the meeting. THEN, while I was on zoom, it began hailing and storming and I had no umbrella. Another sign to not do it? Nah. I ended up walking into the hair salon soaked and he had to blow dry it before they could do anything. Anyways, it actually ended up being such a cool experience, trying to communicate with one another, both of us knowing little of the other’s language. It also was THE most fancy, high-end salon I had ever been to. Most importantly, I am absolutely obsessed with how my hair turned out. So in the end, how many regrets do I have you ask? Zero. See? I told you I like to get into detail. I hope you enjoyed, stay tuned for more updates! Ciao for now!
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Ciao! I have SO much to catch you up on. I have been in Italy for over a month now and I didn’t know it would be possible for me to fall more in love with this country… but here we are! I adore everything about my life here.
First of all, I can’t say enough times how wonderful my host family is and how much I appreciate them. While doing our best to communicate with one another, I have been learning a lot of Italian! Sometimes the language barrier is harder than others so google translate has definitely been my best friend, however it has been super helpful pushing myself to actually try and speak the Italian translations. Also, my host mom and host dad always cook up some delicious food for us and are so genuinely caring over McCartney and I’s wellbeing. Overall, I feel really blessed to have been placed with this host family and I am so happy that I have McCartney as my sister living here too. Regarding free-time, going into the city is one of my favorite things to do during my week. I have been eating a lot of yummy Italian food, seeing so much breathtaking architecture and enjoying just sitting in the piazza (the city center)! I also had a week off for the holiday towards the end of March/beginning of April, so I had some lovely people from home visit me. We traveled to places such as Slovenia, Croatia, Padua Italy, Venice Italy, and I got to go back to Florence! I ended that week off with a wine tour with some girls from the Buffalo State cohort, which was an amazing time. Some other things my Italian life has consisted of so far is going to the farm near the city center, taking a cooking class, and going to the beach! Oh, and drinking lots of coffee and eating lots of pasta and gelato, of course. The school has provided me with so many learning experiences and I feel as though I have grown significantly as a future educator during my time student teaching in the International School of Siena. I can’t even begin to say how wonderful my mentor teacher is. She has taught me so much and has been so helpful to me in my lesson planning as well as offering excellent critique on my lessons. She always has such nice things to say and is constantly eager to help me expand my strengths in different areas of instruction. Working with such a diverse classroom has also helped me to grow immensely. I have gotten to learn so much about my grade 1 students and where they are from. A few weeks into my placement, I created a lesson such that I could show them where I am from. I showed them a map of the United States, then a map of specifically New York with Buffalo pinpointed. I also showed them a picture that compared Italy to the U.S., and they were shocked at the size difference! After telling them briefly about where I live, I had them tell me a little more about them. Having knowledge of the students’ background was extremely important to me, so I had everyone make a page that would be made into a book. On their page, they wrote a sentence about where they are from and drew a picture. After everyone finished, I put the book together and placed it in their classroom library for them to look at! I enjoy watching them read through the book as much as I enjoyed reading it myself when it was complete. My experiences at the school have overall been eye-opening. It has pushed me to work hard in many aspects. When reflecting on what has been challenging, the experience that comes to mind for me is teaching the students phonics. I have a class in the early stages, so they are learning things such as the alphabet sounds, vowels, digraphs, etc. Because it is an international school, there are many accents different from mine present in the classroom. My mentor teacher is from the UK, so I of course pronounce many things differently. I often notice my students struggling to understand me because of this, specifically when I am helping them learn to write certain letters or words. During these times, I often have to think about how my mentor would pronounce the given word/letter and say it in this way. Wouldn’t it be funny if I came home with an accent? Anyways, even though that has been a challenge, it has been a really good learning experience for me. I truly am having such a positive experience here. There are so many differences in the Italian education system compared to the U.S. and I am looking forward to sharing all I have learned when I return home. I absolutely love taking part in the inquiry-based learning and seeing how beneficial it is to this group of kids. Oh, speaking of, after wrapping up our unit on volume and measurement, my class just started our new unit of inquiry on ANIMALS!! We have been having so much fun with this unit already and we are even scheduled to take a zoo trip this Thursday (as long as it doesn’t rain, so fingers crossed). Stay tuned as I continue my amazing journey of education and travels. Ciao for now! Ciao! I have almost been in Italy for two full weeks now, and tomorrow marks a week since my student teaching experience in Siena began! In all honesty, I can’t believe this is real life. To say my experience has been wonderful would be an understatement. I have absolutely fallen in love with Siena and the opportunities it has already provided me with. Exploring Florence for the first two days after our arrival was a really nice way to begin the trip. Everything was so beautiful there, and don’t even get me started on the food! I will be returning to Florence for my Spring holiday, so I am excited to be able to appreciate some more time in the city.
There is so much that I wish to share about the impact Siena has had on me already. When our bus arrived, McCartney and I were immediately greeted by our host mom and dad. Rosa and Leo were extremely welcoming and it did not take long for me to feel at home. They have been nothing but kind, caring, and loving during our time together and I could not have asked for a better host family. Honestly, even though the language barrier can make it difficult to understand each other at times, I feel as though it has not affected our ability to connect with one another at all. Not only have I been learning so much, but I have already built relationships with them that I will hold dear to my heart for the rest of my life, and we still have so much time left together! Our second full day in Siena, our Buffalo State cohort got to venture around and see just how beautiful this place really is. There is not anything I can say that will do the views here justice (oh don’t worry, I’ll be showing off lots of pictures). It quickly became my new favorite place in the world. Also, everyone has been nothing but friendly, and once again let me emphasize how INCREDIBLE the food is. I could easily eat pasta and gelato everyday here until the end of time. I genuinely have nothing negative to say about this place, my heart now belongs to Siena. Zero exaggeration. Now, let’s have a chat about the reason I am here to begin with, drumroll please…STUDENT TEACHING!! I am a student teacher in the grade 1 classroom (Kindergarten in the United States) at the International School of Siena. I feel like I sound like a broken record, but I mean it when I say these are the most welcoming people I have ever met. The teachers, staff, and students at the school are absolutely incredible. Working with them has been such a pleasure already. I want to be just like my mentor teacher when I have my own classroom one day. I have so much respect for her and it is evident how great of an impact she has on her students. As for the students, they are the cutest! I am so impressed by how knowledgeable they all are and I am learning so much from them as they are learning from me. They have also shown a huge amount of excitement for my presence in the classroom. I have never felt so much love and it makes me so excited about my future in education with students like these. There are plenty of observations that I have already been making about my student teaching experience at this school. For one, my classroom specifically has so much space. It is exactly what I would imagine an ideal classroom for Early Year Students to look like, plenty of room for play and also experimentation. Speaking of experimentation, this is a HUGE aspect of what a day in Grade 1 here looks like. Something I have noticed is that there is significantly less time for lectures/lessons compared to past placements I have had. This is done intentionally to give the students time to experiment on their own in order to inspire ideas, encourage creativity, and build personal understandings. This is where I immediately saw the characteristics of Inquiry-Based Learning take place, posing questions that they would then experiment themselves in order to answer those questions and problem solve actively. I feel that this is such a fun way for students to learn and I think it is just as, if not more, effective as the teacher formally teaching the content. I also feel that this allows for a great amount of flexibility, which is so important in a classroom to meet the needs of the students. I am beyond excited to continue learning about the school and to contribute to these kids’ educational journeys! Overall, even though this experience is still only in the early stages, I have so many takeaways that will help me grow as both a future educator and an individual in general. Also, I have had an amazing time getting to know this cohort from Buffalo State that I traveled here with. I am very lucky to be alongside each of them in this opportunity and I am excited to see the great things I know they will achieve. I can’t wait to see all of the things to come during my time here and all of the ways I have changed by the end. Keep up with my blogs to see me embracing Italian life! Ciao for now! Ciao! It is officially the night before the night before Italy, and I am getting even more excited as our flight out of Buffalo comes closing in. There is still so much that I have to do between now and then, and I am feeling all of the pre-travel emotions! As much as I am looking forward to this experience, I am definitely experiencing some nerves. This is most likely because I procrastinated to pack (as I always do) and will be gathering all of my things together at the speed of lightning tomorrow! Don't worry, I have compiled a list of everything that I need, so it is just a matter of putting it all in my bags. I was lucky enough to participate in Buffalo State's IPDS Torremaggiore program in January 2023, which has prepared me for the Siena student teaching experience in many ways. For example, going into this program I have the knowledge of the AMAZING food, views, and cultures I will soon be surrounded by. Most importantly though, I have the knowledge that I am going to once again experience the ins and outs of the Italian education system and will be leaving with a much more profound impact on myself. There is definitely more than I can imagine in terms of classroom strategies and ideas that I will be bringing back with me into the United States. One of the things that I am very enthusiastic to learn about is how Italian classrooms incorporate social emotional learning strategies to benefit their students. Also, we have been talking a lot about Inquiry-based learning in our pre-travel seminars, so I am intrigued to learn what this looks like in the International School of Siena's curriculum. There are so many ways that I want to become involved, both in school and out of school, to expand my understanding of Siena. I will definitely not take my time with these students and this staff for granted and will be asking every question that comes to mind. I am beyond thrilled to deepen my love for education and to be surrounded by the people of the International School of Siena in such a beautiful country that I am fortunate to call home for the next two months. Stay tuned to see me working with some brilliant 1st grade minds and soaking in every moment of this incredible opportunity. Ciao for now! P.S. pretend the suitcases say Buon Viaggio (the Italian version of Bon Voyage)
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AuthorCiao! Working with kids has always been one of my biggest inspirations and I cannot wait to deepen my passion through my experience in Siena. I have always had a heart for traveling, so being given this opportunity to take this next step in my future teaching career is a dream come true. Aside from traveling and teaching, I am looking forward to immersing myself in the different cultures, trying new things, and finding as many cute little coffee shops as possible! I couldn’t be more excited for this journey and will carry these memories with me always. ArchivesCategories |