Beginning field reflection

What?
This week we started our field experience.  I am working in a 6th grade class in Alpine.  The class is very well behaved and I am learning a lot. 

So What? 
     I think field experience is a great learning experience.  There are two things that stand out to me the most so far.  The first is the importance and difficulty of classroom management. Even great ideas and perfectly designed curriculum based lesson plans, without the ability to manage a classroom in an orderly and successful way, the teaching and instruction will fail.  I think classroom management techniques must vary by student and teacher relationships.  What works for one teacher or classroom may not work for another set of students or teacher.  To me, it seems tricky to manage.  I am more concerned about classroom management than about actually teaching.  i didn't anticipate that feeling.
     The second is the value of classroom dynamics and the diversity in each classroom, school, and city. The class I have been working with has 32 students which are all very well behaved.  They are polite, work hard, and though they are kids and are not perfect, seem like a class full of potential and motivation. There is very little concerns for learning. The teacher has told us there are only 3 students below grade level and even they seem to be putting forth an effort of their own kind. However, I have talked to other students in field right now who have very poor discipline in their classrooms and students who require multiple levels of intervention.  I can imagine this is more the case than not and it makes me wonder what the influences are and how the classroom management techniques can affect this kind of student problem.

Now What?
     I hope that in the next few weeks of field I will be better able to get more of a feel for how to fit curriculum pertinent lesson planning into the time allotted for each subject.  Because the 6th grade at this school is currently working on a musical production that will be performed the end of the month, I feel that there is not enough curriculum teaching going on.  When time is short I think there has to be creativity in teaching to cover the needed areas.  I think that will be a good thing to observe with our cooperating teacher. I also want to work on my classroom management file with ideas that seem successful in her well behaved classroom.  As I work on my teacher work sample it will be good to see how the statistics of the schools and city relate to the classroom dynamics between my experience and others.  With little experience in the 6th grade age group, I am enjoying my observation and hope to feel more prepared for my career as a teacher.