Final Reflection

According to my first Internship Journal which is marks of my reflection , there is a tacit

tension that tells me that I was very nervous to be in Mrs. Paks classroom. I say this because I

started explaining how they reacted to my appearance whether I was Mrs. Paks sister, asking me

a lot of questions pertaining my life. I did not know what boundaries I can talk about myself

because there might be some misunderstanding from my story to them. Also, I did not want the

students to know about me because I was only going to be there for a short period of time. I

thought that it might be easy to miss me whenever I am not there. I know this sounds cliche but

this idea comes from my previous experiences. I am not there to tell about myself but tell what

the students should know in order to be a educated person to be a future leaders.

As I was going through the rubrics for the unit plan, to be honest, I thought that the

workload was a tremendous amount and I was so worried to finish the work that was asked of

me. However, upon writing the context and the other components of the unit plan, I was so

thrilled to put in my ideas about how the students can engage in this unit. I am a person who

likes to think of creative ways for the students to think about the concept that has been

introduced to them. One of the activities that I think is creative is the area model for multiplying

decimals. I thought becoming a box for each student will make the students see in a bigger

picture rather than seeing it in their own paperwork. All along Calvin Education Program courses

has been emphasizing that movement will help the students to be motivated to learn for whatever

the grade might be. With this in mind, I articulated the idea of creativeness and the idea of

movement as part of this unit.

Some of the parts in the unit plan, especially the pedagogical literature was an

enlightenment in my unit plan. Although this was one of the last things that I wrote for the unit
plan, I think the idea that I put in the literature was used to teach my students. The idea is called

the pedagogical content knowledge. (2002, p. 4) This is done with incorporating the idea with

what the students like and the content that should be learned embedded together to create a better

pedagogical environment. In my classroom, I asked most of the students what they liked and

most of their answers were candies and goodies to make them become more motivated. As I talk

and interact with the students, they seemed to like their outside life of school. I did some

research about the neighborhood while I was writing my context paper for this unit and it seemed

to have a hispanic family centered community. I had an idea of incorporating bringing in the

supermarket, the taco place, and etc in the word problem that I have been using to make them

think about how it can tie into their understanding. As a result, I gave a treat for the group that I

was teaching one day with math and they were really happy to see that I really cared for they

have said. For me as a teacher, the next day, it actually made the students focus better than the

day before. As I was reflecting that day, I asked myself if that was just because of the treat or the

students knowing that it was out of the consideration that I had with them or both.

Overall, Productivity is my word to describe this long and enriching journey that I have

gone through this semester. According to Woolfolk, Productivity is how consistently learning is

maximized with clear activities and routines, teacher preparation, efficient transitions, and

minimal disruption. (p.532) I would say that productivity was just introduced to the students

when it was towards the end of my internship period. It was my first time handling over 20

students at once so most of the time for me was a bit of challenging time for me. I wish I could

have done better by making the activities clearer and so the instructions too. The preparation

needs some more of a management because I procrastinated because I was discouraged to write

everything in English. I denote myself as a low proficient level for a college level student that is
why I have been neglecting to write my unit plan. I will be better next time and I will be a

teacher who will be more productive for the students to engage in the celebration of learning in

the future.

Resources
Ball , D. Loewenberg., & Bass, H. (2002). Toward a Practice-Based Theory of Mathematical
Knowledge for Teaching. CANADIAN MATHEMATICS EDUCATION STUDY GROUP, 3-
14.

Woolfolk, A (2017). Teaching and Assessing. In Educational psychology (13th ed., pp.532).
Pearson