My name is Samantha Rodriguez and I belong to the English BA Program Elementary level at the UPRH. This semester, I enrolled in an elective education course called Art for the Primary grades in order to gain more knowledge and experience with students of Kindergarten through third grade. As soon as I began taking class, my professor gave us an assignment. The topic for this project was “Our Place of Inspiration”. We were told that we had to think of a place that inspired us and make it into something that would represent and epitomize why we were so inspired by it. The very first place that I thought of was a classroom because I had completed my Practice Teaching course last semester and it ended up being an amazing experience that allowed me to grow as a future educator and as a person.
For me, the elementary classroom represents the opportunity to be creative with the content of classes and environment so that student’s academic experience may be most effective. It makes me so happy to think about students genuinely enjoying entering a classroom because it feels like a wonderful “escape”. My goal throughout my Practice Teaching course was to make learning fun and educational for my students. I also wanted to create an unbreakable and loving bond between us so that their perception of successfully learning a second language would be more positive and unquestionably attainable. With that said, my plan for this art project was to make it as realistic as possible with furniture and learning materials that I would place in my own classroom once I start teaching in the working field.
The end result of my school house turned out to be exactly what I had envisioned; I was very happy and satisfied with it. However, what I was so eager to witness was my professor’s reaction to it. She expressed that she thought it was very beautiful and told me that she knew that a lot of work was put into it, the fact that she enjoyed it made me so proud.
