Graduation Speech : Elementary Classroom

Dear administrators, teachers, parents, beloved friends, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 8th grade graduation. It’s a pleasure to be standing in front of you today on this beautiful day to express the happiness we all feel.

Good evening family, friends, faculty, administration, and lastly fellow “soon to be” graduates of Haywood Middle School. It is an honor and a privilege to welcome each and every one of you to the Haywood Middle School graduation. It is just so remarkable to think that our past three years at HMS are officially coming to a close. The past three years have been full of twists and turns that have been made by countless challenges to overcome, whether they be social or academic.

Tonight since it was my last time working with Keily, I told keily that today she could pick the game that we played today, but I told her it had to be math related. Of coarse, the first couple games that she wanted to play were not math related at all, but the she asked if we could play a card game. After observing in a kindergarden classroom last semester and looking at Pintrest from time to time, I drew from my previous knowledge to think of a card game that we could play that would relate to math. The first game that popped into my head was the card game war, but this was a modified version of the game. Instead of the regular war game, we would play addition wars. I told keily that in this card game we would split the deck of cards between

Ever since I was a child, I looked up to all my teachers and was passionate about reading, writing, and teaching my peers. This has made me want to pursue a career as a teacher. I have always wanted to contribute back to my community and make a positive difference for the future of children. Teaching will allow me to motivate students, as well as become a mentor, which will enable me to enhance my communication and leadership skills. Being a goal oriented individual, I would be suitable to train children in required subjects with care and concern. Continually, I want to make a difference in the lives of as many students as I can, such as a child struggling with low self-esteem and/or problems at home. Becoming a teacher will allow me to inspire and help kids realise their true potential. Many of the teachers that I have had throughout my education have become my role models, allowing me to have a positive outlook on life and realise that nothing is impossible if we try hard enough. This has made me want to follow in their footsteps to become an educator.

Throughout life people go through so many adversities. Whether it be good or bad there is always something that arises out of the situation. One of the most thrilling, but yet frightening events to take place throughout someone’s life would be graduation. For many people, graduating from high school is an objective. It takes a lot of time, effort, and determination to accomplish that goal. For others graduation is the end of high school, and the beginning of a new chapter in life. When graduated people feel as if adulthood has begun. In the long run, graduating opens a lot of opportunities for people to thrive.

As result of creating and implementing this artifact, I realized that the most effective lesson plans are those which initiate with the final assessment in mind. So, I applied a pre-test at the very beginning of my lessons with every different group I would be teaching to measure a starting point or the amount of pre-existing knowledge on the topics to be taught. Based on this, I planned the instruction to deliver and how to differentiate it.

I greet you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, whom is the head of my life, and the epitome of all things good. On Tuesday, March 15, 2016 at 3: 30 p.m. The Daughters of Obelisk Court donated ten bags of school supplies valued at $227 to an Department of Defense Education Activity, Bechtel Elementary School PTO, aboard Unites States Marine Corps Base, Camp McTureous for the Tools for School initiative. We were delighted to meet with the school’s Principal, PTO President and staff during our exchange. The supplies will be distributed amongst various classrooms in need of items. This experience has opened a new opportunity of volunteerism within the local community, that’s affects our military and civilian families. I would

Welcome everyone who has accompanied me here today. Today is the day where we are 8th graders for the very last time. Many of us have matured over the last two year and some of us still need more time to bloom. We have faced many challenges over the course of the school years here at Ladera vista, after waves of work putting us down, yet our determination keeps us afloat. The environment here at this school is amazing. Everyone here is friendly and wants you to succeed (almost everyone).

Signing up for encouraging critical and skillful thinking class I was really excited at the possibilities I could learn as an educator to share with my students. Every day in my math class I am trying to show students how I approach different math problems. I go step by step explaining my logic behind every move I make and emphasize why I am making these very specific moves throughout the problem. To me, I feel what I am doing is very cut and dry but somehow there are students who get lost along the way. Maybe it is the way I present the material or it could be that our thinking does not line up. To some students Algebra is very stressful and it is almost a self-preservation class, meaning students fall back on prior knowledge and

I remember seventh grade like it was yesterday. Everything was falling into place. I was happy with my life, had a strong relationship with God, and was content with where I was headed. My elementary and middle school years were just like any other Catholic school student. My schedule consisted of going to school, attending church, a sports practice, and then completing homework like everyone else. It wasn’t until eighth grade, where I was uprooted from that cookie cutter lifestyle, that I was actually challenged and pushed harder to be the best person possible, and to overcome the diversity and influences that I faced in the public school setting.

As for Teacher C, this is her first year teaching as a full-time kindergarten teacher. Prior to being a kindergarten teacher she worked as an instructional support teacher for kindergarten. The primary socioeconomic status of School C is low. It is considered a Title 1 school which means that they reach out to lower socioeconomic families to provide quality education to their children. Most of the families that they work with are single parent families, or divided households with more than one child. Teacher C claimed that most of these parents are incredibly hard working and busy. She said you can see this with the amount of support students are sometimes not able to get at home due to the parents working. Therefore, at School C teachers try their best to provide as much meaningful instruction in school, so that that the families can focus on providing for their children in other ways. Teacher C only utilizes 1-2 hours of technology a day due to the fact that her only access to technology while in school is a computer and projector. These are the only tools that they have available to enrich students’ learning. Through the computer, Teacher C uses power point presentations, short videos, pdf documents, and learning based games. The use of the projector is how she gets everything onto the board and makes it big enough for everyone to see. During the day, Teacher C tries to use these resources at least 2 different times for content such as learning phonics, or

Going back to school when you are in your late thirty’s is a huge step. So much has

As an aspiring elementary educator, my goal is to bridge the student’s knowledge to their curiosity. I will provide the facts that will drive their curiosity to asking questions that are relevant to the past and the future. I do not believe that avoiding inquiry is the most beneficial teaching method for my students because no student is “too young” to understand the events that have shaped our country and our world. There is always a method to teach difficult content in an honest, truthful manner to students. Since I am currently spending my first practicum in a kindergarten classroom, I have been considering and applying methods of teaching history, in regards to Teaching What Really Happened, to the primary levels.

The following paper is a reflection of the experiences and life lessons that ultimately led me to choose a teaching career in mathematics. Of the many experiences that contributed to my desire to become a teacher, tutoring high school students who struggled with math, and hearing my mother’s stories about the rewards of teaching were my greatest sources of inspiration for becoming a teacher. As a student tutor, I witnessed students who lacked self-confidence find hope and pride in their newly acquired abilities through their practice and determination. During this tutoring experience I not only earned the respect of the students, but I gained a sense of purpose for my future. In addition to these short-term rewards like respect and purpose, the success stories my mother (a chemistry professor) shared about the rewards of teaching provided additional motivation for me to become a teacher. These stories consisted of students achieving success in their career fields after taking one of her chemistry courses. Above anything else, my mother found the most rewarding part of teaching was the opportunity to help students develop the life-long skills that ultimately lead to a student’s success outside of school. Thus, it is from these experiences tutoring high school students and my mother’s stories of the long term rewards of teaching, that provide me the passion to become a math teacher.

As a new teacher I am fully aware that I will make mistakes, change my mind, copy something wiser from a more experienced teacher and still make more changes. Actually, I plan on it. The same way I want your students to always be evolving and learning, I also hope to do the same. The way that I will assess students may look a little mess for a while, a jumble of notes, tests, conversations and papers. Be glad you don’t live in my desk. But overall, I hope to know my students, to feel them out, to understand how their little minds are working, to figure out where they need help, what they know and how they got there. I want to be a hands-on-teacher with strong conversations, less homework and more learning. Real learning. Deep understanding that they can take with them and use to help them in other areas.