Peter’s Story

The Educating Peter video was very interesting to me and made me take a step back and think about my practices as a teacher. It was so inspiring to see that a classroom can function with a student such as Peter. The classroom might not as been as calm as a teacher would have wanted, but from my experiences so far in education I have noticed that it is not going to be easy. I have decided that personally it will feel as if I accomplished more as a teacher if I had a class of students that need my help, rather than a class of perfect students.

The students in the classroom had taken over their own learning, they took over the classroom management and made the choices on how to interact with Peter. It did not take the teacher to step into small situations, but rather let the students deal with Peter. If the situation was greater than normal, the teacher would intervene and still the students would talk to Peter. I feel that the way that the students shared their feelings with Peter was much more useful than to tell Peter to stop. Peter was a student that felt feelings, so I believe that the idea to use feelings with Peter in disruptive situations was very useful for the classroom.

I think that the concerns of the teacher were based on her ability to handle the experiences in the classroom with Peter. I believe that the teaher would never have taken Peter as a student, if there was not a belief that it was a positive situation.The teacher was concerned that she would not be able to adjust to the actions of Peter and the relationship of Peter and the students. I believe that it was very hard at the beginning and the teacher seemed a little discouraged at sometimes, but as the year passed, the students grew together. The concerns of the teacher at the end of the year were not based on her management of Peter in the classroom, but rather based on the future that Peter was going to encounter.

The classroom environment was very different in some aspects, but I believed that it was similar in other ways. I think that there were a lot more disruptions in the classroom that the students had to work with that were not seen in traditional classrooms. The students were conditioned to not let Peter distract them and to make sure that they knew the strategies to use when Peter was distracting them. It looked as if the students were given strategies and techniques to use with Peter in the classroom when there was disruption. The teacher talked about the resources that were in the classroom to help the students. I believe that it is necessary to have the resources, as they are relief at certain times of the day when the classroom might be very difficult and busy.

I think that having Peter in the classroom was a positive experience for all the parties. I just don’t know if I would be able to have that experience my first year as a teacher. I feel that it would be difficult for me and I would want to have experiences in my classroom that would build on my ability to have a student like Peter in my classroom. Peter’s story is very inspiring and I would be very proud if I was considered to be a proficient teacher for a student such as Peter.