Final Reflection

1. What was your overall experience with your match-up teacher and this group of students? 15pts

a. Overall my experience with Robert and our 11th grade World Literature class has been
amazing. Before this experience I never thought High School would be a good fit for me
regarding teaching. It might have been the perception of a bigger school or the age of the
students that scared me or it could have been the intimidation of teaching students who
are close in age that scared me away. But being paired with Robert really diminished
these ideals and made my high school experience fruitful and amazing. I can still
remember the first day I walked into class and had 32 high school students starring back
at me. I introduced myself and opened up about who I am the first day. I brought up the
fact that I was a first generation student, that I enjoy reading in neighborhood coffee
shops, and that I enjoy traveling around world teaching English. I couldnt believe that first
day just how curious students were about these hobbies and facts about myself. Because
of the students encouragement and want to get to know me (almost as much as I wanted
to get to know them) made the first day the other day where I felt scared or intimidated.
Throughout the next 11 weeks I did everything I could to build a relationship with these
students. I wanted to know who they are, what they did, and most importantly I wanted to
individually learn strengths and weaknesses of each student in order to help them
succeed further. My experience was rich, and my love for teaching grew higher and
deeper. Robert and Is experience together was so grand that he asked if I would be his
student teacher next semester so our relationship will only grow larger from here.

2. What have you learned about yourself when designing lessons, delivering lessons, and assessing
achievement? 10 pts

a. What I learned about me and my planning this semester was how organized I was
regarding to objectives, ideas, and application. Before this semester I knew of this lesson
system I had sort of created when exploring lesson topics, but this semester made it clear
how chronologically organized I am when I approach a lesson. When I pan a lesson I
start with the overall skill or message we want the student to master. Then I explore the
objectives that would help this be successful. Lastly I research lessons that relate or
explore the same ideas. After I have proficiently completed these three things I then jump
into planning the lesson. Regarding delivering lessons this semester I have tried my
hardest to focus on physical movement in the classroom. In each lesson I have taught
there has been an aspect of movement to get students up and moving. I focused on this
because I have found it easy to plan and deliver a lecture, but difficult to plan a lesson
that aids to the autonomy of the students. I have learned that students need movement to
stay engaged in the material. I also have learned that assessing students can be difficult,
especially when students choose to not apply themselves. The hardest part of this
semester to me personally would be when I had to fail students for quarter one. It was
hard to accept this reality of failure. I also learned that the saying, fair doesnt always
mean equal is completely true within the classroom. I learned that students learn
completely different and need to be approached differently in particular to give students
the same chance to learn the material.

3. How has your classroom management philosophies evolved? 15 pts

a. This field experience taught me to keep to my expectations I set from the beginning. One
specific example of this is semester was my policy on cell phones. I told the students on
the first day that cell phones must be packed away in their bags or in their pockets. They
must be out of sight and out of mind for the 90 minutes they are in the classroom with me.
But a month into the semester I started to give passes for students when I would see
them. When I first talked about the cell phone policy it was a zero tolerance rule. If
students were caught with their cell phones their phones would have to stay in Robertss
desk for the entire period, if students were caught a second time their cell phones were
taken down to the office. When I started to give passes to students it was harder for me to
enforce these rules I had made. It even got to the point where on the 7 th week of school I
had to revisit the rule and explain once again my expectations. After exploring this
expectation again it took several students to enforce this expectation. This experience
has taught me to not ease up on what you expect. Sometimes you have to be the bad guy
in order to have a functioning class.

4. What do teaching strategy do you want to refine and really get to be an expert at during student
teaching? 10 pts

a. The strategy I would like to reform for my own class is concept mapping. I believe Kate
did this for her strategy where she was teaching about creditable research. It a nut shell it
is where students are prompted a question and students answer the question on the
piece of paper. Once the question is answered to the best of their ability students rotate to
the next poster where they comment on the answer given or add new possible answers.
This rotation happens until every student has commented on each question. After

students return to their desks they posters are presented and the teacher guides the
class through each question. I would like to take this and adapt it to a current events unit.
It would be cool if students put their thesis on a paper and students got to give feedback
or questions to the students about their topic. I think it would be a good way to get
students up and moving, and to explore paper possibilities more when it comes to
research and paper structure.