Coming into fieldwork, I honestly wasn’t quite sure of what to expect. I knew that it was a course about teaching, but teaching was never something that I ever imagined myself doing. Because of this, the first few weeks of class interested me a lot, as I began to learn about the basics of teaching, as well as theories such as project based teaching, something that I had unknowingly experienced throughout some of my time in grade school through high school. While some of these topics proved to be more interesting than I first thought they would (such as Dewey’s principles or the idea of project based learning), it was when we began to choose the teachers that we would be pairing up with that I really became excited about the class. Soon enough, after exchanging a few emails with Ms. Donahue (the teacher we were paired up with), we were ready to experience our first class at Rockbridge County High School. Upon arriving at Rockbridge County High School, I wasn’t sure of what to expect. Not only was the school very different from my own high school, but what were the students like? Was Ms. Donahue a nice person? What was her teaching style like? All of my fears were set aside when we stepped into the classroom and were met by Ms. Donahue, who kindly greeted us, and said that we could sit in the back of the class and observe her teaching. Over the course of that class, we got to see the passion and excitement that Ms. Donahue brings to her classroom each day, as she interacted with students and led them in research design. Over the next few trips to her classroom, Ben and I began to interact with the class more and more, helping students design their presentations on their findings, and chaperoning on a fieldtrip to an environmental summit. Meanwhile, in our own classroom at VMI, we started working on our project design, an in class debate on whether or not single use plastics should be banned. This project challenged us to come up with an idea and plan like we were going to execute it in an actual classroom. This assignment, already challenging, was made even more so by our distance-learning environment, however, through countless phone calls, texts, and even zoom meetings, Ben and I worked our way through, eventually creating the finished product that you are reading now.

Fieldwork has been a fun and interesting course, as we learned about different aspects of teaching and learning, and put them into practice in a real classroom setting. Additionally, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to visit and help teach in a local high school classroom, an experience that I’ll never forget. I am extremely grateful for this opportunity which was presented to me, and I look forward to taking the knowledge and skills that I have gained in this course, and applying them elsewhere in my life.