In the spirit of teaching my 4th grade student about different careers, responsibility, and giving back, I gave her the opportunity to create an activity, develop a lesson plan and then teach the lesson to a PPCD (Preschool Program for Children with Disabilities) class that has a student with a visual impairment.
She developed the lesson plan based on one we found on Teachers Pay Teachers. After developing her lesson plan to create a Christmas ornament, the items needed to be shopped for and the day/time needed to be arranged with the classroom teacher.
The day of her lesson, I was her assistant. I was directed to set up the work environment. As the ornament bulbs were glass, my job was to hold the ornament after taking the top off. She worked one-on-one with the students in the room, spending a little extra time talking to the student with a visual impairment as they worked.
Comments I overheard were: “You can do anything! Look at me…I’m teaching you!”, “You are beautiful! Never doubt that!”, and “So what we can’t see that good? We are still smart!”. Each student she worked with she encouraged and praised, even when the student wanted to be somewhere else. While her lesson only lasted 45 minutes in the room, she informed me she was “exhausted” and she didn’t know “how you teachers do that all day long”!
Following her lesson, the classroom teacher was given an evaluation to complete for my student to use as constructive criticism. This was a way to learn more about herself from someone who is not as familiar with her as I am. She also reviewed her lesson by typing a document about it. The bottom line for my student: she wants to do another lesson in the spring!
