Classroom Reflection Paper

Humans have always tried to understand scientific concepts relevant to the individual and to society. Basically, the branch of science started out when ancient people like Nicholas Copernicus, began to wonder about our world. Unlike earlier philosophers, Copernicus applied a systematic method to find answers to his question about our solar system. Views of how science works should be kept simple. Observe your world, find a problem to solve and then apply methods to find the answer. Young children do this naturally. Education should take adavantage of the natural curiosity of the children and apply it to the classroom. Always considering safety of course, teachers should allow time for observation and let students discover answers through their own experimentation. While prominent professors claim science teaching is complicated, like when Richard, J. Hamilton from Arizona State University claims "The whole prosess of learning has turned out to be far more complex than most imagined, and I believe that science educators are struggling to find a new, more effective approach to the complexity" (Hamilton, 1992, p. 202). Respectfully disagreeing, science is still simple. Two like charges simply repel and discovering the concept is not complex. Students learn by exploring and teaching science must incorporate this hands-on approach in order to reach mastery of required teaching

Observing high school science classes was an interesting and enlightening experience. Being in the classroom for the first time since I was a high school student made me view certain aspects differently. The multiple atmospheres of classes, teacher and student relationships, and student behavior were all noted during my observations. I was able to experience both positive and negative interactions between teachers and students, which was interesting.

Students are seated at their desks in their assigned quads. I am standing at the front of the classroom near the whiteboard.

Over the years, I have worked closely with children in various settings from babysitting to the actual classroom, and each time I gain new understanding of children which has allowed me to grow more patient about their behavior. Additionally, I must add that most of the children I have worked with have all come from low Socioeconomic status families which has been proven to be the cause of major behavioral issues. The way I have witnessed the behavior of these children be managed varies between each of the locations. Some teachers and caretakers are quite harsh in their discipline while others are much too passive. In essence, as learned in the Environment and Programs as well as the Discipline and Limits unit, there are several key elements that determine the behavior of children in the classroom. As it relates to Preston Taylor Ministries, behavior management is sometimes ineffective especially when dealing with certain children; however, for the most part, I believe this center handles behavior in an efficient manner.

When I arrived at the classroom with my guide teacher, the supervisor was already there. I helped to keep the class in silence in order to greet the students properly, some of the girls were talking and laughing too much and I asked them to be quiet, the three of us greeted the students before starting the class.

Therefore in school, it is important to use multiple modes of representation in the lesson so that students can have various creative outlets that will help them express themselves, learn from different outlooks and perspectives and meet each student’s individual learning preferences (Mclaughlin, 2015). I see this idea translating in a science classroom fairly quickly because; already so much of science stems from other subjects like math, technology, engineer English, history, and art. Therefore, just by introducing students to science students will regularly be introduced to a variety of different demonstrations. They will view and understand various aspects to science that incorporates so many different theories, images, opinions, facts, culture, tradition and much more.

For this assignment I was unable to ask the teachers at my normal school setting questions due to them being on vacation all this week. That being said I asked one of my favorite teachers who works at the high school I go to. This teacher's name is Claire Hickman, she is the art teacher at Bayshore High School. One of my questions asked how many years she has been in an inclusive learning environment and her answer was 13 years! That’s just 5 years short of my life time so I am sure I can learn a lot from her. I had also asked the overall composition of her classes she mentioned that each class had about 35 students ranging from grades 9 to 12. Of these 35 students 11 would be ESOL, 5 V.E. students, and 1 gifted student. I had even asked if she makes changes on her lesson plans depending on the type of student that are coming into her classroom she said yes. I asked her questions mainly pertaining to students who are ESOL and students who have disabilities. She is extremely open with her views and I knew she would make the perfect candidate to interview.

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.

The lessons were taught in a classroom in a New York City public school. The school is in a low-income neighborhood in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The school’s demographics consist of a majority of Chinese students followed by Hispanic students. A majority of the parents of the students in this class do not speak English. The students were engaged throughout the lessons and it helped that they experience a positive learning environment in this class.

As kids, most of us get up every morning dreading going to school. We beg our parents to let us stay home, and on occasion, fake sick just to get out of school for a day. There are many factors that attribute to making us want to stay home from school but as a teacher, I want to provide an atmosphere where students enjoy coming to my classroom. Kids should feel like they matter and are respected when they are learning in a classroom, and from the learning experiences that I have had and will gain in ECCO, I intend to provide an atmosphere where not only can they can flourish and thrive, but they are able to influence the world around them.

Since taking this class, my mind has been opened to so many new ideas and perspectives about the society we live in, and teaching in general. I have always considered myself to be an open-minded person, and have always striven to be socially aware. I would make sure to be on date with current social events that were happening and especially during the election, I made sure to know all sides of a topic before trying to talk about it. When I had to sign up for this class last semester, I thought that it would be easy, and that we would not talk about anything I did not already know. I thought I was socially aware about everything at the time, and that I did not need to be educated anymore on the topic of multiculturalism. Well, having been in this class for half a semester I can honestly say that I have learned more in the last eight weeks than I have taught myself. I feel like I have been able to broaden my multicultural lens extensively since starting that class, and I know that it will continue to widen as the semester goes on.

When reading Chapter 7 of “The Essentials of Science and Literacy” I was able to realize important practices when it comes to science instruction that are not being implemented in the classroom. As a part of the classroom there are many good practices that I observe from my cooperating teacher. However, I believe that no general education teacher provides perfect instruction in every subject.

Before I began this observation assignment for my SPED class I was nervous and a bit skeptical about how everything was going to be, because I have never observed an inclusion class. After my first day of observation I felt more confident about my career choice. In this reflection paper I will talk about the assignment and all the things I found interesting, important, and challenging. I will also talk about how I overcame the challenges, my misconceptions prior to observing, and how this field experience will affect my education environment. The last things I will talk about is how my future behavior will now be affected by what I learned and how this experience helped me better understand my personal and professional goals.

Walking into the first two weeks of the EDU program I desired to experience what it would be like to be a future educator and have a grasp of how to help the molding of our youth and giving them the possibility to become future leaders. Doctor dresser was able to bring in a Concordia alumni who had just begun to experience his professional education, career and is teaching multiple different grade levels as a young teacher. When he first walked into the classroom my first impressions were that unfortunately he looked very inexperienced and unsure of what was to be expected of the lecture I thought to myself in the position of a younger student in his classroom this is a person I would not take seriously. He then proceeded to communicate

We all have our opinoins of school, you either love it or you hate. Teachers are the ones who give us impression of school. Most of the time your opinion of school is due to your classroom inviroment. Your classroom enviroment depends on your class mates or your teacher, but in my opinion your teacher makes or break your how you feel about being a school. The way that a teacher operates her classroom can either be very enjoyble and make you wanna be there or make you miserable and make you dread having to attend her class. I don’t really remember much about my school days, but I do remember my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Harrel, was the best teacher ever. A teacher you could never forget. I can’t remember any of my other teachers so I am gonna use my son’s Pre-K teacher as an example of a bad teacher. His teacher’s name was Mrs. McRee, she was not a partent’s favorite teacher. These two teacher was totally opisite of eacher in many, many ways.