Internship Reflection #14

 Multiage Management

I would like to talk about  multiage management as the last internship reflection. There is especially a big gap of age in elementary schools. Unlike middle school or high school, the biggest age gap would be six years between the lowest grade which is Kindergartener, 5years old and the uppermost grade which is fifth grade, 11years old. There must be not only huge developmental differences but also intellectual and emotional differences between these groups of children. Even if they are not in same class, teachers need to know how to deal with different age groups in order to efficiently teach and manage them. Through different strategies in terms of management or teaching toward each age group, teachers can expect better educational achievements and effectiveness.     

The classrooms I have observed were divided in three groups which are unit A, unit B and unit C. And each class is paired up with double grade like kindergartener and first grader is paired up for a class and second grader and third grader is paired up for a class. Famous educator, Montessori also emphasized the multiage education strategies. She believed this strategy is very effective in many ways according to her observations about human development. I also agree that multi-age setting could provide a chance for both younger and older students to get various benefits by imitative learning and peer tutoring. However, sometimes it could be much pickier for teachers to teach and manage students.   

Even though the setting doesn’t look easy, the host teacher effectively dealt with each unit and each age in a class. The teacher basically set up the fundamental teaching and management strategies toward whole grades and modify a little bit according to developmental needs of each age. While teaching younger students like unit A, she tried to concretely explain by using easy examples with interesting motions and repeat directions more times in order to remind younger ones what to do and how to do. She also encouraged older students to help younger students just in case younger students don’t understand instruction or follow the direction. For example, when working on sketchbook worksheets, unlike upper grades, the teacher has younger ones actually put their head down on the table and think and imagine what they are going to draw since young students easily lose their concentration. The teacher tends to be stricter to upper grade students since some easily tend to be defiant and interrupt the lesson. And in terms of language education, she used higher level vocabularies to upper grade.     

I cannot forget the moment when I met unit C which are fourth and fifth grade for the first time. Many of them were physically more developed than I expected. Some students tend to show the aspect of adolescence and a few showed resistance to me. Because of these surprises, I was afraid of upper students at first and realized that there is a huge gap between students in elementary school. However, after getting used to each other, I felt much more comfortable dealing with upper graders and found that some would be able to have deep conversation.

I believe art teachers need to be able to efficiently communicate and deal with each age group of students. In order to encourage and manage students to get involved in art making process, deeper understanding and active communication or appropriate strictness would be required. In terms of that, I was very impressed by the teacher’s proficiency in dealing with each age group. As a pre-service teacher, I had better study and research children’s development and, if possible, I would like to have more experience working with students in order to understand them in detail. This internship provided a great chance for me to concretely think about my future students and classroom and I could polish my educational philosophy by interacting with the teacher and students.