I had the opportunity to attend and actively participate in a third grade classroom for my Clinical

IMB Pilot Semester. With this being a new program at UNC Charlotte, I had the privilege of
attending my classroom one day a week for seven hours as opposed to everyday for two weeks.
Having attended my assigned school and classroom starting the first week of February, I have
had the opportunity to build excellent relationships and rapport among my two Coordinating
Teachers, my students, the school, and the administration staff. Throughout this experience, I was
able to gain a significant amount of knowledge about classroom management, teaching
strategies, and effective tools to implement in my future classroom.

Over the past couple of months, I followed a block of students throughout their day from Block
One, literacy and social studies, and Block Two, math and science. After discussing with my
teacher prior to and during the teacher interview, I was able to get an understanding of the
minimal to no role that writing or writers workshop has in their classroom. Despite her differing
opinion, the administration at my school did not provide a time allotment for writers workshop
in the third grade due to the high stakes testing in reading. Therefore, the literacy specialist that I
had the opportunity to collaborate with alongside did not have a strong focus on writing in her
classroom. Although the teacher did not have a strong presence of writers workshop in her
classroom, she did make her efforts to integrate writing strategies into her literacy lessons. One
strategy that was focused on school-wide, was R.A.C.E. R.A.C.E stands for: Restating the
question, answering the question in all of its parts, citing evidence from the text, and extending
through making a personal or text connection. Despite the disappointment I experienced when I
was aware of the lack of writers workshop in this classroom, it was beneficial to see an effective
writing strategy that was used that helped students and extended their knowledge through
writing.

Although I did not have the opportunity to visually see or experience writers workshop in my
Clinical IMB semester, after being enrolled in the course ELED 3226 I do believe that writers
workshop is an essential part of the classroom and should be implemented. Throughout this
Clinical IMB experience, I would have loved the opportunity to see workshops and teacher-
student conferring about pieces of writing. However, I am very thankful that I had the
opportunity to extend my knowledge about writers workshop during this course.

During my experience throughout the IMB Clinical Semester, the students were very well
behaved due to the efficient use of classroom management that was implemented in both of the
Block classrooms. In addition, my literacy Coordinating Teacher informed me that last year
her scores were in the top 25% of all educators for the language arts standardized testing in
North Carolina. I believe that this experience went well due to the fact that I had superior role
models that guided me and allowed me the privilege of seeing what it really means to be an
effective educator. I hope that one day my classroom is managed and I can help students achieve
as well as my Coordinating Teachers do, and I could not have chosen better mentors to work
under throughout this IMB Clinical Semester.

As a whole, I am very thankful for this opportunity to observe and actively participate in this
third grade classroom. With the Clinical IMB Semester being a pilot program and something new
that is being implemented with the University, I was a little nervous at first of how to balance
being both a teacher and a student. However, I am very grateful for this experience. I already feel
as if I have so much more knowledge about teaching and what it means to truly be an educator.
Through conversing with my Coordinating Teachers and receiving feedback after I taught
multiple lessons, I feel as if I encompass the necessary strategies, tools, and classroom
management tips now that I was not aware of prior to this experience. This has been such an
amazing group of students and staff members to work with and my expectations for this semester
were passed by far. I am already missing my students and the staff members greatly. I am very
thankful for this opportunity and professional development which will definitely aid me as a
future educator and as I embark on my career journey.