Reflection Finals Week

Yay! This week is finals week which means that after Friday, I don't have class for two and a half weeks! For our final on Monday we had to turn in all of our assignments from the semester. That was kind of stressful preparing for it, but once we got there we just got to chat while each person conferenced with Dr. Waters. For our bilingual/cultural final we were just finishing up with book report presentations, but I did mine two weeks ago, so I didn't have anything to worry about. On Tuesday, we had our science final. That was kind of annoying to me, because the class was Science METHODS and we took a test on Science CONTENT, so that is a little annoying, but I did pretty good. We also did a children's book presentation thing where we talked about how we could use the book to teach science. Then we had our Classroom Management final. That class was kind of like a party. Pretty much, we ate food and went over some scenarios about behavior problems and discussed possible ways to handle it. Wednesday, was my hard day! That day was our literacy final. We were given information, like a case study, on two students and their literacy and we had to create a plan for instruction. I feel like it went okay, but I don't really know how I did. I just hope I did well enough to keep my scholarship. I definitely feel like I have learned so much this semester. I am satisfied with what I have learned, but I still have to worry about the grades.

Reflection

This was our last week of regular classes! I am so glad to be almost done with this semester! It has been a long one. On Monday in our foundations class we had a guest speaker. It was kind of nice having a change of pace from all of the facilitations, but that class is kind of stressing me out because I have procrastinated the assignments! Then for our Foundations of Multicultural classroom we continued presenting book reports and I did mine last week so it is just smooth sailing for that class! On Tuesday, we had Science, which is a three hour block so it is always very long. I am writing this on Friday and by now I really can't remember what we did in class other than we did some baseball game review thing for the final. Then we had our classroom management class where we pretty much talked about book reports that we were to turn in that day and how to prepare for the final. On Wednesday we had our Literacy Class. We turned in our Case Studies for that class which is kind of stressful I am not sure how well I did. I tried to do a good job, but I know Dr. Byrd is a hard grader so it still stresses me a bit. On Thursday we had Language Arts Methods. In that class we turned in a bunch of huge projects. It was great to be done with them! It is nice just to know I don't have to think about them anymore other than keeping copies of the ones that are key assignments. I am feeling pretty prepared for finals week, but I feel like I have no clue what grades I am getting in any of my classes. I hope I do well enough to keep my scholarship. One thing that really irritates me is that a lot of my professors are constantly saying not to do homework or projects or reading for, "the grade," we should be doing it to be good teachers. I am really here to learn how to become a great teacher, but how can they say grades don't matter? That really burns me up, because it does matter. If we don't get at least a B- we have to retake that class, and some of us have scholarships and our grades are a matter of thousands of dollars. So far scholarships have saved me from spending over $15,000! I wish they would stop saying not to worry about our grades. Anyway no one really reads this so I am going to just stop ranting now.

Reflection

It was so great to have a break last week! Today we went back to classes though. In foundations of American Education we discussed small class size. I think it was a pretty interesting discussion, but I felt like it was really repetitive and not that useful since I don't think we as teachers will have a lot of say in what our class sizes will be. After that class we had our Multicultural Education Class. In that class we turned in our Field Reflection and some of us presented book reports. It was really great for me to sign up to get it done the first week! Now I don't have anything to worry about for that class for the rest of the semester! On Tuesday for Science we did some type of review game for the final. In Classroom management we talked about field experience a little bit more and turned in a worksheet. On Wednesday we turned in our Case Study. That was sort of stressful because I unfortunately put it off until the last minute and had to stay up until 1 AM working on it! One fortunate thing though, is that when we got to class Dr. Byrd said we could have another week to work on it. I am glad I have some more time to perfect it before I turn it in especially since it is a key assignment. On Thursday we had Language Arts Methods. Class went okay, but I was kind of frustrated that we were given a bunch of extra assignments that weren't on the syllabus and I thought I had things under wraps for the semester and now I have a bunch of work to do! Oh well, I have to do what I have to do to make it through the semester.