CPIII Blog
I know to expect a lot from young students, especially after my elementary practicum experience. Younger students can wrap their minds around some pretty complicated things.

I'm just worried, I guess, that when I become a teacher, I might assume that they know things that they might not know. Unless you have been teaching at the same school for quite some time and have worked out a grade by grade curriculum, how will you know what they know and what they don't? For college students like us to go from learning contemporary trends to teaching general music to kindergardeners, we might forget where to start.

When I was in Kindergarten our main classroom teacher had these teddy bear cut outs for us to color and then we were going to put them on our bulletin board in the hall. She told us to color them in tan. I didn't know what tan was. I've always been resistant to asking teachers questions, so I colored it in with every crayon, that way some of it had to be right. However, when my teacher saw it she yelled at me for not following directions. I will never forget that day.

My story is sort of pathetic, but when you are that young and that eager to please and you do something wrong, it's a big deal. The teacher obviously assumed that we all knew what tan was, and every one else in my class seemed to know. However, what if there is that one student who doesn't know what the teacher is talking about and is too nervous to ask? I guess I just remember how horrible I felt and I would never want to do that to one of my students.