Classroom Reflection

Being Present 1. When I arrived to class I expected myself and my students to be fully present. If they were experiencing joy, sadness, a burden, I would have them share with the class before continuing on. This allowed my students to be focused on the now and not on what happened or will happen. An exercise that helped them accomplish this was to write something down that may be hindering them from being present and deposit it, without their name, into a classroom box. Temprarily, I was able to clear their mind and get them focused on what is happening now.

Ms. Gilmore did a great job at this strategy. While the students were working on an essay, she walked around the classroom keeping close proximity to provide help and keep them on task. In the same class period, Ms. Gilmore used another classroom management strategy. When she changed to the next task the class was going to do, the students knew that they had to have all of their stuff out with their eyes on her to show that they were “ready”. This was an understood rule that had been implemented the whole year in that classroom. This technique was very effective (MS #5). The final effective technique I witnessed was encouraging the students to take notes. Mrs. Street’s class all had a folder specifically for notes. Even if they were just being given an assignment, they would take notes. This naturally brought about a quiet, orderly, respectful, and “on-task” classroom (MS #6),

Mindfulness, in particular, is associated with perspective taking and empathetic responding, relatedness and interpersonal closeness, and emotional communication, and anger management. Therefore, mindfulness may help a teacher be more responsive to individual students. Teaching is an extremely emotionally-demanding profession. Fortunately, studies show that mindfulness-based interventions may promote resilience and reduce the emotional exhaustion that precedes burnout. This can help teachers promote their own sense of well being and self care, in turn maintaining their care and compassion for their students.

Mindfulness involves maintaining awareness of our thoughts, feeling, and environment without judging the present moment or rehashing the past. It is an essential practice to teacher leaders because it controls their feeling and help them manage their classes. There are two types of mindfulness formal and informal practices. Formal practice is more important and effective than the informal one. It involves:

one. Ms. Cochran starts with having all students stretch and prepare for their activity. For the most part her activities involve working collaboratively in groups. The students are allowed to interact differently with one another compared to the classroom. Students are free to yell at the top of their lungs and run around without being punished. The students seem to interact more with each other in this class. I think overall this class requires and needs student to be interactive in order to be successful.

In some aspects, the twenty minutes I spent microteaching felt like some of the most awkward twenty minutes of my life. In some of former other classes such as MAT223 (Intro to Secondary Mathematics Education) we had done assignments similar to this microteaching activity. I remember our group had the responsibility of teaching another form of proving Pythagorean Theorem. That was a beneficial activity because it gave us teachers in training the opportunity to get in front of the class and solidify a mathematical idea in front of "students". Unlike the MAT223 activity, the microteach activity is a more accurate and beneficial setting; at least that is how I felt while in front of the class.

Over the next several pages I will discuss many aspects of education. This will include the role that I am employed, the demographics of the area I work in and specific responsibilities I have as a paraprofessional. I will explore the classroom setting I am in, including the relationship to my students, supervisors, and other disciplines within the educational system.

Today at my placement, I noticed a different kind of interaction my teacher was having with his students. Instead of focusing on academics or connecting with the student, the teacher was trying to monitor the language, attitudes, and dialogue that happened in the classroom space. The interaction happened before the first period started. There was a student at the teacher's desk getting help with an essay and two other students talking a few feet away. One of the students who was talking made a comment that one of his female African American teachers was horrible because she did not know how to teach or speak. Though the student did not directly say the teacher did not know to teach or speak, the emphasis he placed on the teachers race and the explanation, “she does not speak well but I guess she cannot help that”, made it clear that he meant that the problem was because she was female and African American. My cooperating teacher upon hearing the comment stopped helping the student he was with and turned to the student calling him out saying that the student was being, “Racist, sexist, and a jerk”. They had a brief discussion about how what the student said was inappropriate and that he should try talking to this teacher if he needs help. Overall, the incident was not that intense with the student simply walking away afterward and it ended quickly, but it made me realize this was the first time I had seen a teacher address a student who was looking down on a specific group of

This semester I observed Mrs. Sizemore at Walter Williams High School. She teaches two math 3 inclusion classes and one math 3 honors class. I learned a lot from watching Mrs. Sizemore teach, assisting the students with math worksheets, explaining problems on the board to the class, and talking with Mrs. Sizemore during breaks. The following three class articles, “Tracking from Theory to Practice,” “Trust in Schools,” and “The School and the Community” are all applicable to the experiences I had.

With the new requirements of this lesson in adding a focal point in the arts, I feared this would produce a challenge for my host teacher’s students. She had warned me on their lack of ability to deal with change as a group. In trying to balance time for an art piece, my plans were to add a small group activity and make a page of their portfolio apart of the assessment. I believe most of the students understood the lesson, but many only seemed to understand parts of the directions alone, and I think that inhibited their quality of work for the pretest, post test, and activity.

This unit was created with my class from the 16-17 school year in mind. My class last year, as a whole performed above average on almost every indicator. I found myself running across a problem I know that many teachers don’t often come across. I found that for about half of my class the curriculum was not challenging enough, for about one-fourth of the class, it was just right, and for the other fourth it was a little more challenging. I know typically this is the other way around, but I designed this unit specifically to meet the needs of all of my learners.

My experiences with supervision have been limited. When I began my career at Mercy High School in 2006, I was a participant in Creighton University’s Magis Catholic Teaching Corps. This unique experience required principals to conduct formal observations of Magis teachers every semester until they graduated from the program. Although my principal observed my classroom instruction as mandated, she never visited my classroom again. When she retired at the end of my sixth-year teaching, my principal had not formally evaluated in years.

2.    I am an activist. Walking into ETST 111 on the first day I was excited to critically analyze the history and repercussion of predominate movements that have undoubtedly affected the way in which society works today. Moreover, I was intrigued as to how my previous work as an activist will translate in my academic strives to understand what great movement building concepts are. The simple congregation of the class serves as a median to begin dialogue. I was curious to see how the structure of the class was going to mediate the aforesaid. In this part of the assignment, I will critically analyze how effective and ineffective the course structure, content, format, grading and decision-making process was for the class:

This semester has been somewhat of a roller coaster ride for me, but with many, many more highs then lows. My first semester in the College of Education, has reaffirmed what I originally believed; I was meant to be an educator and I want this more than anything in the world. At moments, I was scared to follow through or was discouraged, but other moments in the Cohort and in the classrooms, are moments that stay with you for the rest of your career. I can honestly say that every day I was in the classroom with my kids and supporting them during their educational journey was a highlight, but one specific highlight comes to mind when looking back. While I was always there helping the kids out and supporting my teacher mentor, I was given my

In my presentation today we are going to be looking what mindfulness is, why we should practice it in the classroom, the benefits and when we should practice it. I will also be providing you with many practical ways that you can implement mindfulness into your classrooms.