This week we had our EdCamp, and I found it very interested. At first, I was overwhelmed with the amount of people that were there, and I was wondering how exactly it would work, but I believe it went well. I liked that there were people leading the rooms who had experience and knowledge on the topics, so they were able to answer our questions and lead the discussions. I spent most of the time in the room about how to survive your first practicum. I found it funny when I got into the room and saw basically everyone from my cohort, because we all wanted information that would help us when we start practicums next year. We learned a lot of helpful tips, and I am going to discuss a few of them. The first piece of advice we were given was to know the school and get to know the teachers and students. This connects to having good communication and a good relationship with your mentor teacher because you are going to learn so much from them. We were also told that during practicum we are going to find our own teaching style and what works for us, which may be different than our mentor teacher’s way of teaching. Something else that we were told is that we are going to do lots of planning, but things will change and will not necessarily go the way we plan. We will also plan a lot more then we actually get through in the classroom. I think this is important to know because I like to plan and if things do not go as I planned, I would stress, but knowing this information makes me feel better. I also really like that we were told to do what we can to have a positive impact on the school by helping with sports or the school play, for example. I am definitely going to try to do this because I love sports and find them so much fun, so I would love to help with that. One last point that has stuck with me is about choosing one main thing you want to learn professionally and focus on that throughout the practicum. This could be classroom management or inclusion, for example. It is too much if you try to do all of it at once, so focusing on one main thing will be helpful and, I believe, less stressful and overwhelming. I gained lots of great information from this session, but I also have to keep in mind that practicums are different and no matter how much advice I get, I am still going to have to figure some things out on my own. I enjoyed this EdCamp and would be interested in going to one again in the future.

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