My name is Melissa Dehring and I am currently a senior, with a major in early childhood education and minors in science and language arts, at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.  I will be receiving my Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education as well as my ZA endorsement for early childhood education in April 2003.
 

Learning Environment

During the Winter 2003 semester, I will be student teaching in Elizabeth Garcia’s third grade classroom at Nowlin Elementary School in the Dearborn Public School District.  Upon completion of the StaRchart, we found that Nowlin School is operating at a low tech level.  Our school has one computer lab, containing 28 apple computers connected to the Internet on one single phone line.  The connection speed is fairly slow, however we do have a variety of educational software programs for the students to use.  We do have one IMac computer in our classroom, but it is not connected to the Internet.  The school also has a digital camera, digital video camera and a media center with five Dell computers with Internet connection.  We also have access to three Toshiba laptops in our classroom, which are not provided by the school district. 

Fortunately, our class has only 19 students.  This low number enabled us to put the children into cooperative learning groups, which created a unique environment in which they could share their ideas throughout the project.  I was also very fortunate to be able to work with Elizabeth Garcia (my cooperating teacher) while completing this project.  From the beginning of this project, she considered our MITTEN unit to be a team effort even after I had taken over the daily routine of the class.  Even though she had limited knowledge of how to use the software when we first began the project, she quickly learned how to manipulate all of the programs while teaching the children what she was learning as well.