Introduction

Welcome to My Capstone Portfolio!

The experiences that I have gained through Wheelock College are ones that I will take with me for the rest of my life. I am so thankful for the people I have met, professors I have learned from, and the professional experience I have gained through my elementary education practicum field work. Thinking back to my first year of college, I was extremely eager to learn and to one day become a teacher. Four years later, I am even more eager and excited to jump into the field of my dreams, which I believe Wheelock College has thoroughly prepared me for. I came to Wheelock from North Andover, Massachusetts where I lived for my whole life. Coming to Boston opened me up to world that was different from the town I grew up in, but a world that I whole heartedly embraced and feel has made be grow as an individual as well as a student.

At Wheelock, I majored in Human Growth and Development with a focus in Psychology, and a Professional Major in Elementary Education. These courses provided me with the knowledge I will need in the future. One of my most memorable courses in my major was a psychology course, HDP 325 Memory, Identity, and Development. This course taught me the importance of thinking back on early memories, and how those memories can be interpreted in terms of development. By doing so, I came to the realization that most of my earliest memories were based on experiences from my early and elementary school education. Because I’ve had such wonderful memories from my experience of elementary school, I have always had the passion to become a teacher, and one day bring even better experiences to the children I one day will teach.
Wheelock has brought me closer to this passion. One main reason for this is because I believe it has truly made me a well rounded student. Being a part of the Cross Country Running team at Wheelock made me value the importance of teamwork and collaboration. It taught me that trying something new and putting everything I have into something is just as rewarding as it is nerve-racking. After experiencing the team dynamic I learned through Cross Country, I could easily relate it to my experience as a student teacher and believe that it guided me in the positive way I worked with and created relationships with the staff as well as the students. It took a whole team to run a class that included not only the teacher, but included the student teachers, specialists, aids, parents, volunteers and more.

I have had a great amount of experience working with children and families through Wheelock as well as outside of Wheelock. I have been a nanny for four years in Beacon Hill. I have bonded with this family tremendously, and witnessed the growth and development of a boy who was in first grade when I started working with him, and is now in fourth! Through Wheelock, I experienced two internships my freshman year. One internship was at the Underwood After-School Program in Newton, MA and the other at the Ellis Memorial Toddler Program in Boston, MA. During these internships, I've built strong communication skills with children that varied in age from two to eleven years old. For my pre-practicum during my junior year, I had the experience of working in the Lawrence School in Brookline, MA in a third grade classroom. Being a pre-practicum student in Brookline provided me with an experience I could relate to, seeing as it was very similar in terms of demographic as the elementary school I attended. During my practicum, I worked in a first and second grade classroom at the Graham and Parks Alternative Public School in Cambridge, MA. The atmosphere, school culture, and demographic of students was very different compared to my pre-practicum experience, although both were exceptionally a pleasure to work in. Because I experienced student teaching in a suburban community as well as a mixed urban/suburban community, I feel like I have learned the tools to teach in both environments and am looking forward to applying all that I have learned.