Reflection #12

Time to reflect again.

This one is short since it’s only about one event, but it is rewarding. We had been working on our 6^th grade lesson plans for a while and all our efforts finally culminated in our experiences teaching the students Monday and today.

I was profoundly impacted by the level of goodness I felt as I saw how much the students appreciated what we did. I won’t go into full detail because the teaching reflection is another assignment but as I saw the kids get excited for the project, and interact among themselves and with us as they worked, and as I saw Miss Foster’s reaction to the kids’ excitement, I had a good feeling of having done something meaningful for the students. It was nice.

It was also pleasing to see all of our planning efforts and theoretical banter come together in a concrete lesson that we were able to teach and explain. Ideas are nice, but results are satisfying, and I would say that this was a satisfying experience for us, for the kids, and for Miss Foster.

So… I still want to go into industry. But after the experiences I’ve had teaching so far, I just may go into education at some point in my career. I never thought I would have so seriously considered teaching, but it is great indeed. 

Reflection #11

This week we worked on our lesson plans for the 6^th graders.

I realize this reflection will be exceedingly short. Give me a break, we literally only did one thing all week. Therefore, the “observe” part of this is only one line.

I love imagining how the students will react as we teach them! I always loved having guests when I was a young(er) student, so I wonder if they will get as excited as I always did. On the other hand, I also loved messing around whenever we had a substitute teacher. Hopefully that doesn’t come back to bite me.

Another thing I thought about was the excitement I get when the lesson plan comes together. As a student, I often couldn’t care less about what the teacher was teaching or how they were teaching it. Now as I’m preparing to teach, I am really invested in what we are doing. I feel bad giving so many teachers such little regard, they work hard and put so much into what they do.

I can’t wait to finish refining our plan and go teach. I will definitely think about different teaching and learning styles as we prepare to teach, and try to make the teaching as effective as possible. This assignment is the culmination of everything we have learned in 276 so far. I am excited.

[end of reflection]

Reflection #10

Reflection #10.

That's not a mistake. There was no reflection posted last week. 

This week was good. Every week is good.

We’ve been doing STL teaching. I’ll say more about my own performance in a different document entitled “STL Video Reflection”. We also had a learning adventure. More about that in a minute.

What do I have to say about STL teaching? Everyone has been doing a great job. I mean, sure, we’re far from perfect, but I have had my attention captured and I’ve learned interesting things. That’s a winning combination, as far as I’m concerned. What I really want to talk about for a second is the learning adventure…

As weird as this may sound, I loved the learning adventure. Doing that assignment was like a light bulb went off and I realized suddenly that I cared about this theoretical stuff way more than I thought. Looking over the list of philosophers was surprisingly pleasant. Learning all 20 STLs was mind-opening more than it was annoying. Knowing the parts of a lesson plan felt more empowering than like it was just memorization. Maybe it was because I kept calling it a learning adventure and not a test, so it didn’t have the feeling of work as strongly as it might have, but the learning adventure was nice.

What does this mean for me? Well, I will probably revisit the list of philosophers and learn more about their ideas, even if I’m not required to. I’ll keep a more open mind whenever we talk about the theoretical sides of teaching. And I’ll give more consideration to teaching research than perhaps I was before.

That’s all for now.