Is Teaching for Me?

Since completing my course and service learning I am even more excited to become an Elementary teacher. I have learned so much from this course and it was a great experience to observe different teaching styles. I was able to make connections with this course and my service placement. Teaching will definitely not be an easy task, it will be a lot of work, but I am looking forward to the challenge. 

I know this career path in teaching is for me. I have realized how much I love children and that I love to teach. I want to inspire children to learn. I want to be a great example for them, and I want to be one that my students will remember as one of their best teachers. I cannot wait to graduate and start my teaching career. 

My service learning placement has helped influence my decision to become a teacher. I love to be in a classroom and see children learning. I have seen many trials that teachers and students have both endured. I find it an exciting challenge to help students with learning disabilities and behavior issues. I am looking forward to the day I have my own classroom, to teach students that learning is fun and rewarding. 

My next steps will be to finish my courses in Elementary education. I am anxious to start my student teaching. It will be a wonderful to work alongside an experienced teacher and learn from them. I will work as hard as I can to graduate as soon as possible to become a teacher. I wish I had realized a long time ago that this is what I wanted to do and it is now a goal I can't wait to achieve.

Classroom Assessment

Today I am going to assess the connections I am making between my service learning placement and my course work. As I look back over my blog posts and reflect on my learning I can see how I have made connections between the course topics and my service learning experiences. I have experienced engaged learning in my course of instruction by learning new technology, and I have seen it at my service learning placement when the teacher engages her students by using technology also. Another example would be the standards and accountability that the teacher has to follow. I am taught through this course about the standards and accountability teachers must follow, and then I see her teaching them in my placement. I find it very interesting how much I am learning, now that I am assessing my own learning from this class and making connections. By learning from this course and then seeing the teacher teach, I understand what I am learning and I see things differently while I observe. 

The process of blogging helps me think and notice things in my service learning placement because I look at teaching through a new perspective. Writing about what I am learning helps me understand and remember what I am observing. I love blogging about what I am learning, because I can look back at what I wrote, it's like a journal of my experiences and what I have learned. I see what I have learned from my first blog post to my last and see how I have grown through observing and helping my service learning teacher. I have learned about the diversity of the students, how each child is different, and how students learn in different ways. I have also learned how important it is to engage the students. These are things I did not know when I posted my first blog post. I find it important to blog what I am learning, so I will continue to blog as I proceed through my classes. Blogging is a great tool, it helps me think about what I am learning and observing. 

 
  

 

Standards and Accountability

In my Service Learning placement I see many different standards being addressed, but the main standards I see being focused on the most are English Language Arts, English Language Proficiency, and Mathematics, This morning while I was in a second grade class, the teacher had the students work on reading. Some of the students were asked to read silently at the book corner, others worked on reading at the computers, and the teacher took a group to her reading table. The teacher and the students in the group read a book together. Then the teacher let them start again at the beginning, but she had the students start at different times so they weren't reading the same words. When they finished reading she asked the students questions about the book such as the setting, characters, and plot, which tested them on their comprehension. In  my learning placement I have also seen alot of focus on math. The students are currently learning about place value, counting to a hundred by 5's, 10's, and using symbols >, =, <, to record results of comparisons. I have not seen alot of emphasis on the social studies and science standard yet. I wonder if that is because this is taught in the afternoon when I am not there, or if there is so much to be taught with reading, writing, and math that there is not as much emphasis on these subjects.

I spoke with my cooperating teacher about standards and standardized testing. She understands that teachers should be teaching the same concepts, but she finds it very difficult to agree with standardized testing. She doesn't understand why they do not trust the teachers to show what the students have learned. She feels the testing is not fair because it doesn't show everything the child has been taught and learned during the school year. Some students do not do well on tests and this makes the tests even more difficult to understand what the child has achieved.

Diversity in Today's Schools

There is a lot of diversity in my service-learning classroom. I see students with autism, ADHD, asperger syndrome, and learning disabilities. The teacher addresses the diversity by making sure these students are not sitting next to each other. She has informed me that if they are sitting next to each other they talk, misbehave, and upset each other. The teacher explained that she finds it easier for the diverse children to sit next to other students that are good examples, that can help them, and make sure they understand.  

The teacher differentiates the instruction by separating the students into groups based on their level of learning. After their morning work the teacher has the students do what is called the daily five. Students have five different items they can work on at this time. While the students are working individually on the daily five assignments, she calls groups of four to five students back to the kidney desk. They read books that are on the students level together as a group. Each student takes turns reading a page and then the teacher passes a microphone made out of material to the student that would like to add a comment or answer a question. The microphone gives each child a chance to respond and the other students know it is not their turn to talk unless they have the microphone. This gives the teacher time to work in small groups and quality attention to the students with diversity.

History of American Education

In my service learning I have seen support for English learners. In my class their is a  student who knows a little English, so this has been helpful to the student and the teacher. The teacher is very good in teaching the student English, by repeating the assignment slowly and making sure the student understands. She also has the other students help. The students are very good to include the student in everything they do. I know this child and other students that need help learning English would not be getting the help they need if it wasn't for Lau v. Nichols. There are also many students that are of a different race in the school. All the students, no matter what race or ethnicity, they are treated and respected equally. I know this would not be the case if it were not for Brown v. Board. I also see alot of emphasis on Math and Science. I believe this has come about because of the launch of the first artificial satellite Sputnik. Since this time the American people realized their students were two years behind the Russians. So they determined there should be more concentration on Math and Science. 

I am not very familiar with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), so I did a little research and according to the U.S. Government Publishing Office it is "An Act to close the achievement gap with accountability, flexibility, and choice, so that no child is left behind". This means that every child should test in math and reading on grade level. There is a blueprint that reforms the re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. According to the U.S. Department of Education, "This blueprint builds on the significant reforms already made in response to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 around four areas: (1) Improving teacher and principal effectiveness to ensure that every classroom has a great teacher and every school has a great leader; (2) Providing information to families to help them evaluate and improve their children's schools, and to educators to help them improve their students' learning; (3) Implementing college- and career-ready standards and developing improved assessments aligned with those standards; and (4) Improving student learning and achievement in America's lowest-performing schools by providing intensive support and effective interventions." Hopefully these reforms will help the NCLB, but I believe more still needs to be improved on the Act. From what I have learned myself from personal experience, from teachers, and parents, the NCLB focuses too much on standardized testing and encourages teachers to teach for the test. 

                                                 Works Cited

"Keeping America Informed". U.S. Government Publishing Office. GPO, 8 Jan. 2002.
     Web. 15 Oct. 2015
"A Blueprint for Reform". U.S. Department of Education. U.S. Government, 27 May 2011. 
     Web. 15 Oct. 2015.

                          

Engaging Learners

I find it interesting how the teacher in my service learning placement engages the students in meaningful ways. I also never realized how important it is to engage the students while teaching, and how much the teacher really uses engagement. For my first example how my cooperating teacher engages students in a meaningful way is when the teacher asks a question and then waits. She gives the students plenty of time to think about the question. This gets their attention because they know she will call on any of them, so they should be ready with an answer. This gets the students focused and ready for participation. My second example is when the teacher engaged the students with a game. It is a version of "Go Fish" using plural nouns. First the teacher reviews the rules of plural nouns, divides the students into groups of three, and then she has them play "Go Fish" matching the plural nouns such as "goose" matches with the plural noun "geese". The students really enjoyed this engaging activity and it helped them learn about plural nouns as they were having fun. They are focused and participating in an engaging activity. For my third example of engaged learning the teacher has a morning meeting. She will call the students to the back of the classroom to sit on a rug. There she has written a story or a letter to the students. There are many mistakes and she asks the students to find them. She will ask one student at a time to come up and correct one of the mistakes they see. This gets the students stimulated while participating in finding the mistakes and correcting them. Plus they are curiously engaged in what the teacher has written for them.

I have observed in another classroom where the teacher had six worksheets he wanted the students to complete. At first the students worked quietly, but as the students moved on to the next few worksheets the students became overwhelmed and restless. I felt the teacher could have made this more engaging by creating centers, where they rotate to different activities on the topic covered. The teacher could incorporate one worksheet each day in one of the centers. This way they wouldn't become restless and overwhelmed trying to complete the six worksheets all at once. They would become engaged in the activities in the centers that would keep them focused and participating. This would help them retain the information they were learning about.

Letter from teacher

Creating Productive Learning Environments

In my Service Learning placement I have great opportunities to make connections with the concepts I am learning in my education class. I am understanding that giving choices to students is very important for their motivation and success. There has been times my cooperative teacher has offered her students a choice. Just last week, she placed four different poems on the board. The students were asked to choose one poem to rewrite and draw a picture about. This gave the students freedom to make their own choice, which I could see encouraged them and they were excited about the assignment. 

It is very important to make your students feel loved and safe. In my Service Learning placement my teacher knows how important this is for creating a classroom community. At the beginning of the school year the teacher explains the classroom rules. Rule #1 Respect others, respect yourself, respect your school. Rule #2 Listen when your teacher is talking. Rule #3 Be safe, be kind, be honest. Rules teach the children the teacher cares, and if she cares about them they know they are loved  and she wants them to be safe. 

To establish good classroom behavior the teacher must first establish a positive relationship with each student. To accomplish this each student must feel important to the teacher. When the student speaks, the teacher should always listen without interruption. This shows the student the teacher cares. When the teacher observes the positive behavior of a student, the teacher should always point this out to build the students' self-esteem. It is so important to get to know the students, show them you care, and support them. They will feel they belong and will trust the teacher. A student that knows they are safe and loved will give respect to the teacher and to the class which in turn will create good classroom behavior.

Classroom Rules