Stanford University Urban Studies &
Urban Summer Fellowship
Student perspectives of community-engaged learning and research across the United States
I had just completed my second summer at Breakthrough Twin Cities! For a quick reminder, Breakthrough Twin Cities is a college access program that provides summer academic programing for 7th to 9th grade students, and I taught two 9th Grade Literature Classes! I’ve been back home in Kansas City for the past few weeks, and it feels weird not having anything to do, especially with how busy every single day of Breakthrough was. But I’ve had a lot of time to reflect, and I will be sharing some of those thoughts here. It was a very tough summer with many challenges, but from those challenges, I’ve been able to grow a great deal and realize other areas that I need to improve on.
The biggest place I’ve seen improvement from my self is just my confidence in the classroom. Last summer at Breakthrough, I had no teaching experience and was so nervous pretty much every single day. This summer, I felt so much more confident, which not only helped my mental health and nerves, but also made me a much more effective teacher, as I was more adaptive and held higher standards for my students. My ability to lesson plan has also greatly improved—with experience, I have a much better idea of what works and engages students and what doesn’t, and general I found that my classes went much better this summer than last summer. This summer, I also had the great opportunity to go camping for the first time! I was out for about a week camping with my students as part of the program, and we canoed! It was great fun, and I would love to go out on trail again. Though I excelled in certain areas, I definitely need improvement in others. This summer, I focused primarily on improving my ability to design classes—I was doing research for my Honors thesis specifically on comparing two pedagogical styles, so my attention was mostly devoted to what happens inside the classroom. I’ve done great work in this regard, and I’m very proud about that. But because I was so focused on what happens inside the classroom, the essential aspect of teacher/student relationships kind of fell to the side. I still made meaningful connections, but because that wasn’t my focus, I could tell that feel to the side a bit. This also occasionally hindered my ability to think of some of my students with an asset-based mindset. There were many challenges regarding student behavior over the summer, and I could have done much better if I reached out to the students more and developed a more caring relationship with them. Focusing how I build student relationships will be my focus the next time I have a teaching opportunity. And after Breakthrough, I know they’ll be another teaching opportunity. I still have great resolve to be a teacher, and it’s still very important to me that I work with underresouced students and do everything I can to show them that I believe in them. I’m very excited to take what I’ve learned from this summer and write about it in my Honors thesis too! Even though I’m quite sure that I will not be returning to Breakthrough for a third summer, I could not be more grateful for Breakthrough for the opportunities it has given me. I’ve had the privilege to meet so many amazing students and teachers, and I can’t think of a more formative program for me. It is through Breakthrough I realized my passion for teaching and serving underresourced students—I want that passion to fuel me throughout my life.
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AuthorThis blog is authored by Stanford University students engaged in summer fellowships through the Cardinal Quarter and the Program on Urban Studies. All writings and thoughts belong to the Fellows and do not represent the opinion of the sponsoring programs. Archives
September 2018
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