Education Reflection Paper

As postmodern educators feel their way through an ever changing multicultural classroom environment, it is imperative that each hold firmly to their philosophical positions and do not let society influence them in a negative way. At the same time all teachers should be continually reflecting inwardly to make oneself accountable to their profession.

FIVE YEAR EDUCATION/CAREER GOALS? My five year plan is to become an assistant principal within my county. I want to impact my county with a positive influence, with a direction that is clear and where teachers and students can succeed.

On October 31, 2017, I observed at P.S. 45 and was truly bewitched by the entire experience (and not just because it was Halloween!). Antecedent to this observation, I first met class 3-213 the week prior, when they had a substitute teacher. In contrast to their roaring and uncontrollable performance at that time, one could clearly distinguish their significant change in behavior with Mrs. Diaz in the room. Mrs. Diaz is able to control the class with just the sound of her voice or snap of her fingers. It was exhilarating to see how well-behaved and attentive the children were to her. Additionally, my cooperating teacher was extremely helpful and even thoroughly explained to me her methods on classroom management. Mrs. Diaz informed me that she is rather stern with the children and continuously uses positive reinforcement throughout the day. Due to their drastic change in behavior and return to normalcy, I was able to witness Mrs Diaz us key instructional strategies and techniques.

Everyday teachers make decisions that influences student’s opportunities to enhance their learning through different content areas. Thus, it is essential as a teacher to draw upon the content knowledge you want your students to take away from your class but it is also equally important to equip your students with skills that will help them outside of the academic realm as well.

Over the last sixteen weeks I have grown in so many ways that have affected my view on education today. Our world and education today is much different than what it was in the past. I think a major misconception about teaching is that we just teach curriculum, however, teachers serve many different roles in their classrooms and schools. These roles are created because of many different factors, such as sociometric status, poverty levels, and school systems. As we learned in our class, students react to these different factors in many ways and these are main reasons that will affect a classroom. In this essay, I will be discussing our navigations through the social justice issues and other factors that classrooms face by talking about the key points of our class throughout the semester.

These past few weeks of school have been a fun and stressful experience. People have told me that eighth grade would be easier than last year, but I have found that to be false. On a more positive note, I have made several new friends and become more involved socially. So far this year I am trying to apply the strengths that I possess. Perseverance, time management, and a good work ethic are the strengths that I use daily at school. When I am not doing school related work, I am either at gymnastics practice or spending time with family. A typical day in my life consists of school, practice, and sleep. I don’t have time to be involved with any school sports or activities. If I could chose to be more involved in social and school activities, I would. Unfortunately, there are not enough hours in the day to do everything I want. On the weekend, I enjoy taking a break from the busy week. It’s hard to do this when I have to catch up or get ahead on school because I know that I’m not going to have time to do my work. My goals for this year are to let go of my worries and not to be so hard on myself. I am striving to be positive and have personal happiness this year.

My name Jose Antonio Cintron, I am a United States Army soldier. I have been in the military for sixteen years, and for the last ten of those years, I have been serving as an attack helicopter pilot. In the following paragraphs, I will guide you through my personal educational experience, where it started, how it transformed to this point and how I want it to progress in the future.

I have been part of the education system since the age of four. From Preschool to twelfth grade, a lot has changed throughout my education. I can assert that education has altered my of way of thinking, especially from elementary to now. Because of education my life has improved in all aspects.

As I have assessed various theories and ideas pertaining to education and human development, I have made a sincere effort to reflect on my own experiences as an education professional. Our readings about student development and our analyses and discussions surrounding the challenges that current education systems pose have not only opened my eyes to deep-rooted, systemic flaws in ideology and practice, but they have also allowed me to seek out deeper meaning with regard to my current role as a professional of higher education. For my reflective essay I would like to highlight some of my experiences in the field working in continuing education, or non-credit programming for adult learners, and how postmodernist ideology has become a tool through which we seek solutions for those who have been disserviced by our current education system. Specifically, I will reflect on why students are often underserved as a result of traditional educational models, and how continuing education programs offer viable, postmodernist solutions to a broken system.

I have been asked to reflect on what the world may be like in 2020 and how will those changes affect education. In addition, I have been asked to share how the innovations in the classroom affect others and how being a teacher will be different in 2020 versus today. Let me reflect on these inquiries for you and share my predictions based off of topics we have discussed in this course as well as current world happenings.

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.

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 the students are learning about science in my field placement, the teacher has a set routine or schedule that they would follow. As I am observing my classroom, I have notice that the students would go to the science lab to be introduced to the science topic that we are learning. While the students are in the science lab, they are doing experiments that are very hands on. The science lab’s teacher would also introduce the students by connecting to their prior knowledge and have them explain their thinking. Since the students are very engaging in science lab, they enjoy attending the class because they get to learn something new every week.

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

Education has always extremely important to me and I believe it is the most important tool anyone can have. Growing up with well-educated parents always showed me what an education can give you, but it also gave me an environment where learning was something to be proud of. As both a Salisbury University student and a Salisbury native, I have invested a lot of time and effort into this city. I am a product of the Wicomico County Public School System and I could not be more proud of that. My experiences in minority-majority schools taught me lessons that go beyond the classroom—lessons about how our world works. Attending primarily underserved schools (Wicomico Middle/High) showed me where public school education both succeeds