Class Reflection Paper

This course can be of useful in my everyday activities of dealing with Nursing Home facilities, NYDOH and Department of Social Services. I will increase my knowledge of different approaches on how to distinguish issues for solutions to operational challenges and learn advanced techniques on processes I can use to enhance my productivity in getting our members approved for institutional

Hi class, I hope you enjoyed this days at elementary. Back to reality you have to do...

As Epiphany once said "I’ve found that growing up means being honest. About what I want. What I need. What I feel. Who I am." As I came into the Junior year, I didn't expect as many setbacks as I encountered. It was definitely a challenging year academically and personally because I hit many bumps in the road that made me fall into a never ending spiral of pessimism. I have definitely improved myself since the beginning of the year and have learned a lot of valuable lessons. This year has definitely been about growth and finding a pathway from darkness to light that has shaped me to become a stronger person with the ability to be challenged and not doubt myself but rather to overcome the obstacles and strive for

For four long years I felt as if my high school was in a different world in of itself. I had spent that time interacting with an extensive amount of groups, or “cliques”, and getting to know what they do. Through my experiences, I had begun to realize what made this “subculture” high school of sorts run like it did. High school is an incredibly dynamic time for people, and I had changed as a person dramatically from my freshman to senior year. Like many, my freshman year was quite awkward, as remnants of my middle school self remained with me. As time went on, how, I talked to more people and grew out of my passive and shy personality. This did not just randomly happen without reason though. I began to learn and realize who I was and whom I enjoyed talking to in school, which explained why I spent so much time socializing with multiple kinds and groups of people. Everyone’s concept of “normal” was different, and high school was where I learned that lesson and will never forget.

Having only one AP class where I felt I could be successful, I enrolled into AP Studio Art for my junior year of high school. It was advertised that students would only work 4 hours a week on their own for it. In the past, I got high grades in my art classes, so, I thought it would be a better fit than the other three AP classes that were offered to me. I was so, so terribly wrong.

Prior to being introduced to Roger, I was familiar with distinguishing a language disorder, language difference, language delay, an articulation disorder, and a phonological disorder. A language disorder is present in all of the spoken and written languages the individual exhibits. The common misconception is that a language disorder may appear in one language and remain dormant in another language. A language delay is where the child presents the milestones of language at a later time from his/her peers. On the other hand, a language difference is where two or more individuals are not familiar with the form, content, and use of each other’s languages. Furthermore, speech disorders fall into two divisions known as phonological and articulation disorders. Phonological disorders are present when an individual is unable to produce the correct pronunciation of a phoneme despite placing their articulators in the correct placement. However, an articulation disorder is where the individual is unable to produce certain phonemes due to incorrect placement of their articulators, such as not being able to place their tongue on their alveolar ridge.

Previously teaching was something that teachers did. The role of teachers was known to be the center of the classroom, they were expected to know everything about a subject matter and be able to explain it well to students. The role of the students was to learn by listening, practicing and working hard. We now know that teaching and learning are closely related. By understanding the relationship of teaching and learning we can understand the concept of Mathematizing. Mathematizing is the process of constructing meaning. This is accomplished by letting students develop their own strategies and questions and letting them explore them through classroom discussion with their peers. (Young Mathematicians at work) This can also be accomplished by allowing students to use real world examples to help deepen their understanding of the concepts.My understanding of this topic has evolved over this course I was always viewed teachers as the know it all of the classroom and the students roll was to retain as much as possible because they were going to need to use it on a test in the future. Learning the new concept of mathematizing I recognize that a teacher must also act as a facilitator of the classroom. Allowing students to think freely make mistakes and make sense of problems and concepts on their own. While also leaving space for the students to teach the teacher or help the teacher understand what they are thinking and how they came to their answer.

The most important resource is children. In order to fully tap that resource and allow children to gain the knowledge needed to perform to the best of their ability, and thus become effective, contributing members of society, competent teachers are needed in classrooms across the world. I hope to become a teacher, specifically for elementary-aged children, once I finish school; however, with all of the varying teaching methods educators across the world employ, I am curious to see which approaches to expanding young minds have been the most successful. Additionally, as a teacher, I would like to provide a creative environment for students that makes learning something students want to participate in, as opposed to a chore. Furthermore, because children all interpret information in different ways, I am interested in finding teaching methods that work for a majority of children.

“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”

During my first year in college, I did not realize the major challenges I would face being a first-generation college student that was undeclared as a major. I knew I had to continue my education as many of my teachers and advisers in high school had mentioned. But I never knew the struggle of not having a family member to ask for advice or guidance to navigate my college education or choosing a major. I became interested in helping other students in their path post-high school by volunteering, mentoring and working with high school students in their process of applying or learning about their postsecondary education options. After working with different ethnic groups I came to realize that those that identified as

Our whole life is based upon the choices we make. These choices are crucial parts of who we are and how we live, but a big part of decision-making is your outlook on life. Your mentality plays a big role in how you dissect your decisions. Meaning that if you’re feeling down it’s likely to make cheerless choices, but if you’re feeling happy your decisions are in all likelihood found to be euphoric. Our mentality can take us to experience things we never believed possible. When it comes to fate I believe that because of my very own experiences our fate can be changed by changing our outlook on life.

Since I was in a middle school setting, I was given the opportunity to observe multiple classrooms which a variety of different students. In my first class, I noticed that most, if not all students were African American. The ratio was 22:1, where about 18 of them were boys. The second class I went to, had a ratio of 19:1. The ethnicity in this class was again, mostly African American, with a few Hispanics and Caucasian. The third class represented a ratio of 20:1. The ethnicity was made up of mostly Hispanics, Caucasian, with 1 African American child. My final class ratio was 18:1, where most students were Hispanic and African American.

In the sixth grade, I was a part of the accelerated math program in my middle school; we moved faster than the other classes so that by the time we completed 8th grade we would be finished with Algebra 1 and ready to start freshman year in sophomore Math. Because we moved so much faster I ran into more obstacles mastering the concepts than I might have at a slower pace and had to get over them quickly. When I found myself beginning to fall behind on a topic, at first I panicked, but then my natural response kicked in, I focused all of my efforts on the concept holding me back. This has always been my response to a challenge, I bring all the mental force I have to bear on it until I have completely mastered it, smashing the challenge into tiny bits that are easier to comprehend. There is a quote from one of my favorite novels, A Wise Man’s Fear, which sums up what I tend to do: “The boy has a mind like an iron hammer.” I tend to smash an offending obstacle into manageable pieces. In Math, I overcame these struggles by delving deep into exactly how each aspect of the topic worked and why, through asking more questions of more people and working to understand the concept. I stayed after class, had my engineer dad teach the concept to me, and had his co-workers reteach it to me. Now, I like to think that I have mostly mastered this technique, -recently, when working with equations containing Euler’s number I questioned three different teachers, researched it online, and practiced logarithms until I was proficient enough to give a lesson on the complete concept to my math team. By the time we moved on in class, the ideas that I struggled with the most were the ones that I understood the best because I enjoyed overcoming the challenge.

I thought I knew pain; I wrong. True pain floods the encompasses a person. The anguish overwhelms every aspect of their lives. I first saw true pain in the eyes of poverty. During my seventh grade year, I had the opportunity to go on my first mission trip. The young, naive version of myself who flew into Haiti never returned, but was replaced with a new, wiser rendition who is determined to change the world.

Life changing… it is a word that I sometimes think about, but never truly understood its’ meaning, until the summer of 2017. During church one morning my pastor was standing up on the stage in front of the congregation giving the announcements for the week. The final announcement was regarding a summer mission trip for high school students. The students would go to Reynosa, Mexico where there is a children’s home that my church serves at every year. I had never been on a mission trip and had never experienced anything like it before, so I decided that I would go on what could be a life-changing trip.