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goals is to get teaching experiences and learn about variety of teaching styles to be able to apply
these experiences with teaching processes in different cultures. For the pedagogy project, I chose
to participate as a co-teacher for the course EDSE 682, Foundations in Gifted Education. I chose
this course because it is a keystone class for gifted education majors. Students start with this
foundation in gifted education as a baseline where they are introduced to essential knowledge
such as history, theories, identification, and programming about students with gifts and talents. I
would like to build positive experiences and perspectives toward gifted education among future
teachers.
I co-taught this class with Dr. Stuart Omdal in Fall 2016, where I supervised group
discussions, communicated with students and reflected on their discussion board posts, as well as
graded their assignments, providing them with appropriate feedback. I wanted to expand my
teaching experience, so in Fall 2017, I served as co-teacher for this course again with Dr. Amy
Graefe. During this experience, I was given countless opportunities to develop my own teaching
style, share my ideas, design activities, and help building rubrics for some assignments. I also,
had the opportunity to teach part of the units. Some of my additional responsibilities included
developing presentations for two units (Wisdom Intelligence and Law in Gifted Education),
assignments. This co-teaching experience was rich in that I felt that I had responsibilities both as
a teacher and as a learner. I learned new topics in the field of gifted education, such as Wisdom
intelligence and the law in gifted education. Dr. Amy mentored me as I designed units,
The experience with teaching the unit about wisdom intelligence and Sternberg’s WICS
model provided me with interesting knowledge about a new topic. Through my search about this
topic, I contacted Dr. Sternberg while searching for a measurement tool for his model, and he
referral me to helpful resources (College Admissions for the 20th Century), which contained
some of the wisdom questions from the model. Also, to get more understanding of the concept of
wisdom, I read different articles about this topic, and I contacted Dr. Monika Ardelt, a professor
of Sociology and Graduate Coordinator at the University of Florida and asked her about the
wisdom test that she designed. I then used the test as an introduction to the topic with the class.
The other unit that I co-taught was Law of Gifted Education. This responsibility led me to
dig deep into this topic, and I learned a great deal about how laws and policies are developed
from searching and reading about developments in law and cases that were associated with
enacted policies. This co-teaching experience contributed valuable knowledge about law in
gifted education that supported me in writing my policy paper. Also, together with Dr. Graefe, I
designed a case law activity for the students to complete and facilitated discussions. Student
feedback indicated that students found that the case study activity was interesting and relevant to
Co-teaching the foundations course linked me to most of the concepts and information
that I had studied in the previous class, EDSE 733 “Preparing Teacher for Students with
Exceptionalities,” with Dr. Sandra Bowen, so I was able to apply this information in preparing
materials, teaching strategies, grading students’ work, and providing feedback for them. I
enjoyed practicing a variety of teaching styles such as leading a group discussions, discussing
questions, and presenting lectures. Also, I gained practice and experience in grading students’
work and providing feedback for each student, indicating strengths and weaknesses in their
work.
Through discussing students’ ideas and points of view, I learned from their experiences in
teaching students with advanced abilities at different school levels. This allowed me to see the
differences between the education system in the USA and the system in the KSA. Comparing
these two systems prompted me to think about how I can adapt what I learn here to apply to the
naturally builds skills, which I have gained regardless of the cultural differences between
education systems here and in the KSA. These experiences with Dr. Omdal and Dr. Graefe also
One of the most valuable aspects of studying is benefitting from the mentoring that
professors provide to students. Co-teaching seems an excellent and natural setting for mentoring,
and I appreciated all the modeling, encouragement, and guided practice that Dr. Omdal and Dr.
Graefe gave to me. I see how building my confidence was Dr. Graefe’s goal. Thanks to her.
At the conclusion each unit, I distributed a presentation evaluation form to all the
students. I used student feedback from the first unit to improve my presentation for the next unit.
Time constraints were a notable part of the students’ feedback for both units. Students felt that
there was not enough time to cover the topics in depth. Students were especially interested in
Wisdom Intelligence, and feedback indicated that my slides were clear and well-designed. I
questions. Based on some of the feedback, I will continue to work on improving the pace of my
presentations. I will also work on speaking clearly and loud enough for people to hear easily.
Although my planning and preparing for teaching each unit went well, I found one of the
greatest challenges of this experience was to teach graduate students who are all currently
professional teachers, so I felt that I was learning from them while I was teaching. Also, I was
challenged by teaching topics that were new to me in English to American students. It surprised
me that the students, who were all current teachers, knew less about law in education than I
expected. In this way, I felt that I made a solid contribution to their knowledge base. This was a
Finally, co-teaching this course with a hybrid format (online with two face-to-face
sessions) was a helpful experience with using education technology. I taught this class with an
online format twice, which allowed me to work with two different systems: Blackboard and
Canvas. I learned how to use these two learning platform programs to post announcements,
provide feedback and post grades through speed grade, and communicate individually and with
groups on discussion boards. This enhanced my ability to use technology and provided the
benefit of online teaching experience so that I can apply this as a new method in Saudi Arabia.
My previous experience as a faculty member at the university level in the KSA was
limited to two classes. These co-teaching experiences have added depth and breadth to my
previous skill level by providing opportunities to expand my teaching abilities and experience. I
have many skills, both personally and professionally, to develop further before I master the art of