All That I Have Learned ... 

We have done a lot in this class, and on a week to week basis it didn’t feel like that much but looking back on the quarter in its entirety we really have read a lot, wrote a lot, and taught a lot to each other and ourselves throughout our time in this class. The book talks were one of my favorite things that we did in class, I loved that we got to talk about books that we could use in our classroom, and we got really great ideas for other books to keep on our shelves in the future. Without doing the book talks we wouldn’t have had that much exposure to new materials, it really was a unique experience that I haven’t had in another class before. I also really appreciated the teaching element within the class, being given opportunities to lead discussions, that practice is what I think is most important in our classes, especially as I am leading up to student teaching. The blog posts were really helpful as far as getting my ideas on paper in a way that is constructive and allowed for reflection later when we talked about them in class. I also feel really good about the work I was able to do on my unit plan with Aly. We worked really hard on that thing and it took a lot of hours talking and discussing what we thought was the best use of our time, how to organize our ideas, and if what we wanted to do was practical, breaking it down and in some areas starting over. Working with her on this project was amazing, I know that this is something that I could have finished by myself if I had to, but being able to work on it with someone, to talk out ideas with them I think that that was a much better way to tackle a project rather than by myself, because teaching isn’t a one person job. We need each other to bounce ideas off of, without each other we wouldn’t be as creative as we could be, and our students wouldn’t benefit the way they should.

              One of the most important theories that I think we explored, especially the one that we used the most often was the theory of discussion as a way of teaching. We had discussions everyday about what we read, why we read it, what it means, and how we are going to use it in our classrooms, or how we won’t. The amount of discussion that we had in class was so beneficial, teaching is a communal job, we need to talk to each other to figure out lesson plans, different materials that we should use, or how we are going to be most effective in our teaching methods. I really enjoyed the discussions that we had in class, we were all talking about the same materials, but we were reading them with different perspectives, we explored new ideas and came to really solid conclusions as a class about how we felt about a text or what we think it would best be used for. We also talked a lot about real world stuff, just life, things we saw on the news, other things we read about outside of class that we wanted to talk about as it related to the text or what we are working on in class. I want to be able to have as many discussions as possible in my future classroom, but I know that we will also need to do other things too. I think that discussions are so important for students to have, they need to talk with one another about their ideas and practice vocalizing their opinions. I plan on using discussions a lot in class, but I also don’t want it to be forced or seem like it is becoming repetitive, I think that just by allowing students to have that freedom within their own learning and class time will engage them a lot more than worksheets and essays.

              I think I participated a lot in this class, and I feel really good about a lot of the stuff I said. I think that in this class I was really able to explore my ideas around education and how I plan to be in the classroom. There was a really cool mixture of students in the class that were already student teaching, some that are being placed currently (like me) and then others that aren’t even in the program yet. I think that this super unique combination of students allowed for us to have discussions that all came from personal perspectives that reflected our current standings in the program. I feel really good about the comments I made, the discussions I participated in, the connections I made with my peers and the overall effort that I put into this class. I worked really hard in this class and I think that effort is reflective of my efforts in school, and the efforts I will put forth when I am a teacher. This class has taught me a lot more than I was prepared to learn, but I feel really good about my progress in the education program, and going forward into my first quarter of student teaching I know that I am prepared.