Teacher Reflection

Throughout the story of “Young Goodman Brown”, Hawthorne uses the image of pink ribbons repeatedly to symbolize the innocence and youth of Faith. In using this symbol, Hawthorne uses imagery and many descriptive details to enhance the meaning and importance of the ribbons in the story “Young Goodman Brown”. However, the pink ribbon symbolizes Brown’s wife Faith and represents her innocence and youth along the text. The ribbons can be inferred from all the information given that the ribbons belong to Faith because it talks about the ribbons three times at the beginning of the story and emphasises its symbolism. Hawthorne writes “Then God bless you!!” said Faith with pink ribbons” (Page 1). One way the ribbons symbolize youth is because many little girls are the only ones that wear pink ribbons or bows usually in their hair rather than adults wearing them. Hawthorne’s choice to use descriptive details enhances the real meaning and significance of Faith’s pink ribbons. Hence, through the use of the writing choice that Hawthorne created, the vivid details that were used, influenced the overall significance and meaning of the pink ribbons.

My time spent in the Clinical setting, so far, has been extremely inciteful as to how to become a better educator in a classroom setting. Through the data I collected I was able to connect Borich’s Seven Variables of learning to the students. By being in the clinical setting for nearly two months, I have been exposed to new ways of thinking when it comes to structuring a classroom and instructing a classroom. Within this reflection you will find out how I would better plan an effective lesson for the pupils in my future classroom. You will also discover what I will do about certain issues in the classroom and how I will address/fix them.

This week’s reading delves into the definitions of the processes and terminology that drives the way that Health Information Technology would operate in the ideal environment. These policies and procedures create the foundation for organizations to build a more interoperable health environment. Currently, each health care establishment seems to operate like its own country. Although they may belong to the larger continent, they may have their own language, currency and customs. This is great when operating within the country, but once a citizen needs to travel to a neighboring republic, the language, currency and custom just doesn’t translate as well. Important information may just be lost in translation. To attempt to bridge this issue, the

As I reflect over my duration as an educator, I ask myself the question, am I providing the best possible learning environment for every child in my classroom. Through experience, I have learned that through relationship building and everyday experiences which take place in either a classroom, at home, or any other stimulating environment, shape the way children learn. When I think about learning in my class, I think about constant improvement, the importance of professionalism in the classroom, and constant reflection.

This term, Nina has made noticeable improvements to stay focused during classroom discussions. Despite her best efforts, Nina still finds it difficult to follow instructions, learn specialist vocabulary, locate and join words together to form meaningful utterances. Furthermore, her language and communication difficulty extend to interactions in collaborative tasks, group work and social situations where she struggles to use social language, such as ‘turn-taking’ and to consider what others say. Due to such communication and interaction difficulties, she requires a lot of support and structured activities to help with her learning.

While STEAM instruction relies on making authentic and engaging connections between the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics, the implementation can look slightly different from classroom to classroom. The first video demonstrates how a STEAM unit can be incorporated in a single content: middle school science. The video shows students working collaboratively in groups to complete the assigned lab and asking questions as needed. The teacher is seen facilitating the activity, as she moves from group to group, addressing those questions, providing suggestions, and guiding students towards the completion of the activity. Although neither the problem nor the driving question of the lesson were explicitly stated or reiterated during the observed clip, the ‘lesson essential question’ and the ‘learning target’ posted on the board communicate and reinforce the objective of this lesson (e.g. students will identify minerals and explain why minerals are important). Thus, based on this and my observations of the teacher and students’ interactions, I predict that this lesson is focused on assessing how well students can identify minerals, as a way to introduce students to the characteristics needed for identifying and classifying rocks. This skill is especially important as students need to solve the problem scenario, which involves describing different types of rocks to assemble a group of “rock” musicians. As I was analyzing the video clip using the

In my position as a vice president of curriculum programs, I visit many diverse educational settings in public and charter schools, both large urban and small rural districts. Daily, I face issues of race, gender, culture, socioeconomic class, and disability. Because I work with diverse students and a multicultural workforce, my reflection regarding powerful social and cultural influences leads me to two different conclusions. The first is that many children in the schools I visit are disadvantaged. They are born into immigrant and transient families and live in communities that rank in the lowest socio-economic strata in the country.

My passion about teaching and my students motivated me to learn more about teaching. So, I really have to admit that I enjoyed this course a lot and I was so excited to take this course to know more about the teaching strategies used and the techniques of the classroom management.

The desire to ascertain how the strategies, interventions and pedagogical that we learn in class are implemented by teachers in the course of teaching prekindergarten classes made me visit Mrs. Smith’s PreK 12 class. Before my visit, I had informed her of my intention to avoid ambushing her at the last minute. My visit to her class lasted for two hours, during which I remained nonpartisan regarding the activities that were taking place in the classroom. Before the class started, however, she introduced me to the class for the sake of making the children comfortable with my presence around them.

One of the most important aspects I want to incorporate in my classroom is making STEM-based subjects less rigid and monotonous for students by providing creative ways for students to embrace STEM-based subjects. In Memphis, teachers are doing just that by structuring lessons “that could be implemented with young children at the local museum as well as in practicum placements in assigned classrooms” (Counsell, Peat, Vaughn, & Johnson, 2015, p. 64). In addition to formatting the lessons in both museums and classrooms, the teachers are also emphasizing the fact that “the need to acknowledge and respect children’s thinking and ideas is equally paramount” (Counsell et al., 2015, p. 65). I strongly agree with Counsell et al.’s opinions on respecting children’s ideas, as I believe that it creates an environment where the children are encouraged to express themselves. After going to a museum and seeing exhibits that tie into the STEM-based lesson, which regarded wheels in this specific article, the teacher then leads several phases of learning within the classroom, beginning with the children observing different types of wheels (Counsell et al., 2015, pp. 65-6). The instructor then asks the children “productive questions [which] guide and facilitate children’s logical-mathematical and scientific thinking” (Counsell et al., 2015, p. 66). In doing this the children are more likely to form a greater understanding of the topics they are learning in class and will be able to apply them

Today in elementary schools, children are far more advanced than my generation of children in elementary school. Countless amounts of their parents are more open-minded, as well as inclined to hold challenging conversations with them at such a young age. Aside from communication, some parents are also helping students brush up on other academic skills, such as mathematics. Parents are not just preparing their students to meet standards in their classes, but to surpass the requirements for their grade levels. In classes, many teachers now take part in three twenty minute rotation activities. This is a formative assessment, that seems like a game to students, but actually allows teachers to reflect on students progress. It also creates this illusion of children being able to have freedom over their learning, and choose what activity they want to begin their rotation periods with. That way, no one is left feeling bored with repetitive lessons, and no one feels overwhelmed with hurried instructed activities. With that being said, I believe Dewey is the perfect representative of this type of learning structure. In this reflection, I will state and explain my reasons why I mainly support Dewey. Next, I will then explain what reasons made me, disagree with Cubberley. Lastly, I will finish up my reflection by readdressing my main thoughts in a brief summary.

Dr. Karen Lea (2016) stated that aggressive behavior has been shown to grow from overly severe and punitive parenting, association with highly aggressive peers, and heavy viewing of television and film violence. Several of my students have clearly experienced such environmental influences which have led to the development of attention seeking behaviors, violent behaviors, poor attitudes towards school and learning, truancy, and below average academic progress. My students have also faced poverty, close family ties to gang activity, death or incarceration of a parent, lack of parental supervision, abuse, hunger, online bullying, inconsistent friendships, and rape.

The changes that I would have made during this unit would include not always assessing with worksheets and varying my instruction. I would have still used some of the worksheets that came with the book, but not after each lesson like I did. I would have liked to use various instructional strategies that would have got the students up and moving during the lesson and not just having to sit there for a majority of them. My student’s performance told me that I taught the material very well and in a way that they could understand. I say this because all of the students improved by at least 15 percent from their pre-test. Yes, my students achieved the level of growth that I expected them to after looking at the pre-test and then looking at their post-test after the unit. The explanation for this is take the students knew what was expected on them each day in class regardless of how the lesson was being taught. When I began teaching and the students were sitting up front on the floor I set expectations for them. If they didn’t follow these expectations I would ask them to move a magnet. In the beginning I would remind the students of the expectations and then after a while I would just say remember the expectations. By setting these right away it showed the student what I expected and left no room to say that they didn’t know what I expected of them. My strengths were presenting the material at a level that the students could understand and being able to be flexible with my

For my practicum, I was placed in a sixth grade English and History classroom. Working with two classes of Fargo middle school students proved to be a great learning experience for me. Prior to my first day with them, I had been questioning whether or not I’d truly like to proceed with earning a degree in education; however, now I am certain I do. One of the most valuable lessons I learned through observation and working one-on-one with students, was that everything in the classroom is subject to change, from the physical learning environment to the timeline of the topics covered.

“During our last lesson we learned about how the built environment affects health. Today we will continue to learn about health disparities and what you can do to advocate for a solution to a health issue in Washington, DC.”