Reflection

This week in our Foundations of American Education we talked about violence in schools. When I was considering the possibility of this happening in a school I worked at it was really overwhelming. I hope that I never have to deal with anything too serious like that, but you never know. I guess all you can do is try to connect with your students and try to make them feel like a welcome and important part of your classroom community. This week in my foundations of a bilingual classroom we talked about the a lot about language. My group presentetd on two articls about English Language Learners. One of them was about students using different dialects in the classroom. The other one was about motivating and connecting with students from other cultures. I think the presentation went okay, but not exactly as planned. Then again, how often do things go exactly according to plan? I am getting very excited to go out and do our field experience next week! I am a little nervous though, because our cooperating teacher hasn't returned any of my partner and I's calls! I guess if worst comes to worst we'll just have to show up at her school on Monday morning! This week during our Science class we talked about what is expected of us for field. I feel like most of our classes this semester have been so vague and not very explicit on what the expectations are of us and then at the last minute they are just throwing all of these extra (busy work) assignments on us and it is just too much! Well, this is just my opinion. Anyway--that's not just based on science class that is with all of our classes. In our classroom management class we just went over the chapter we were currently studying in the text. We were mostly discussing communication with students while managing their behavior. In our Literacy class on Wednesday we went over the field requirements. I feel like I am more clear on everything that is expected of us now. We did finally get a hold of our cooperating teacher which is nice. At least we know what time she wants us to be there on Monday! I am feeling overwhelmed with the work, but excited to be in the field having fun and learning with and from the kids and to get everything done..

Reflection

This week in Foundations of American Education we talked about motivating students who are not motivated. I feel like a lot of people had really good ideas, but I'm not so sure how many will actually work when put into practice, but I guess I'll find out soon enough. In our Foundations of a Bilingual (multicultural) classroom class we discussed our reading assignments on the Gay and Lesbian community and their effect on our classrooms. It was interesting to hear all of the different viewpoints of people in the classroom. I guess I am pretty liberal compared to some other people. A lot of people were kind of getting defensive about teacher's bringing up Gay and Lesbian issues in Elementary classrooms, but I feel like if it comes up (one of the students brings it up, or uses inappropriate language about it) it should be discussed. I know that a lot of people in our community think that homosexuality is wrong, I won't say what my opinion is, but even if you think it's wrong those people still have rights and deserve respect as a person/individual/American Citizen. I don't think we need to teach the kids all about what it is and state my opinion or anything, but you just need to teach the students to respect all. During our classes on Tuesdays we had Science class. It was a bit of a frustrating science class because we were supposed to have a bunch of assignments due, but then he changed the assignments and told us to email them to him instead. Then we had our classroom management class. On Wednesday we had Literacy Methods. In that class we were mostly just preparing for our test that is coming up and discussing what needs to be done during field. I feel like there has been a lot of confusion on what the assignment are for field, but that we finally cleared everything up during our Language Arts Methods class. So there are some assignments that we found out about that we were not expecting, but at least everything is clear now! I am feeling a bit overwhelmed, but I know it will all work out.

Reflection

So far I have decided my blog is really boring and I mostly complain. I will try to make it a little more interesting in case anyone ever actually reads it. This week in our Foundations of Education class we went over Distance Education. I hate to say it, but I don't feel like I learned a whole lot from class. The article we read prior to class was very thorough and going over it for almost two hours class felt like beating the dead dog. That is just my personal opinion. One beneficial thing I learned from it though is that the MIT OCW website exists. It is nice/interesting to know that the information is available to me if I ever want access to it. Our Foundations of Bilingual Education class was alright. We discussed readings that were assigned to class as always. We did also watch an interesting video about Savage Inequalites in American School systems. I found the video very interesting and informative. It also inspired me to want to teach in the district that I grew up in. We don't really have any degraded inner city schools around this area, but seeing the horrible conditions of some schools really makes me motivated to give back to the community. It is very tempting to just try to get a job in the district that pays the most money, but now that I think about it deeper I really would like to get a job in the area I grew up in. It would be sort of like paying back the wonderful teachers I had by replacing them. Nothing too exciting or inspiring happened in my Science Methods class or Classroom management class. I have learned from science though, that when I get out there as a teacher I really would like to incorporate a lot of experiments in my science curriculum. I have also learned that finding an experiment to do really isn't that hard either. I don't need to be super creative or anything I can just look up lesson plans and experiments online. I don't know how first year teachers did it back in the day before the internet. It is such an awesome resource for teachers for lesson ideas, teacher message boards, access to UEN, etc.

Reflection

So far this week is going well, but also very stressful. In our Foundations for Education class we had the guest speaker. I found the information presented to be very interesting. I liked learning more about some of the stuff we need to know to find a job. Our other class on Mondays, Foundations of the Bilingual Classroom went pretty good as far as class goes, but I am afraid I am going to get a horrible score on the reaction paper we turned in. I didn't get a chance to work on it until Sunday because my hard drive on my lap top crashed last week and it wasn't fixed until Saturday night. It is only one assignment though. On Tuesday we had Science Methods and Classroom Management. I don't really feel like I am learning a lot in those classes. I feel like the stuff we are talking about in Science, like covering making a lesson plan. We already learned that last year in Curriculum Design and Assessment. We had to do about twenty lesson plans for that class last semester. The stuff that we learn and discuss in classroom management seems to be pretty obvious to me. Wednesday the class I had was Literacy Methods. I was very glad for the class today. We went over the assignments and lesson plans we will be doing for our Field Work. I was really grateful for that because I have been really stressed lately feeling like I am not sure what to prepare for field.