Personal Reflection Essay

Mr. Wray was the first teacher and the only male teacher I observed. The class was a 7th grade Social Studies academy class. Throughout the observation I noticed he really cares about his students. He took his time going over the topic of discussion, and when some of the students couldn’t catch on he stopped to help the individuals. His class was very well behaved. The only time I really noticed any of the students socializing were when Mr. Wray put them in groups to complete a study guide. The second teacher I observed was 6th grade teacher Mrs. Dunn. She was teaching English to her students. She went over verb phrases and helping verbs throughout the class. I noticed whenever she asked questions quite a few of the students participated by answering. Mrs. Dunn had a positive attitude throughout the class period. I felt she truly enjoyed all her students and treated them the same. Even when some of the students didn’t answer questions correctly she didn’t make them feel dumb. She would just tell them good try. I could tell her students really liked her as a teacher also. The last teacher I observed at Westside Junior High was 7th grade Science teacher Mrs. Dugas. This lady came off as a very strict teacher compared to the other two I had observed. Her students were very talkative, which only made her become more annoyed when having to fuss at them. At the beginning of class the students had a bell ringer to complete. On the particular day I went the bell ringer

While I appreciated that one of my peers provided feedback on my work, I feel that the feedback that was provided did not fulfill the assignment. My peer did not provide detailed feedback on my paper that could be adequately incorporated in my review and revisions. Most of the information that was provided as feedback were simply statements that reiterated what the prompt question was. Please see the below feedback provided to me by my peer.

After a short morning meeting with the substitute we took the children to gym class. I watched gym for a few minutes before heading back to Ms. Keane’s room. Ms. Keane was back and talking to the Penn State student (special education major) that is in my classroom Monday-Thursday. Ms. Keane also said that she had a student teacher on Fridays. Ms. Keane seems

Monday, January 29, 2018, was my first day at Saraland High School and it was my first day of observations. Saraland High School is located in Saraland, Alabama where it is a part of the Saraland City Schools School System. Saraland High School has a student population of approximately 1,000 students. The teacher that I will be observing for this semester is Mr. Kendric Cook. Mr. Cook teaches Health to 10th graders. Mr. Cook has been teaching and coaching for 6 years and this is his first year teaching at Saraland. On my first day, I got to observe Mr. Cook and his teaching styles. Mr. Cook told me before he started his lesson that he considers himself to be a non-traditional teacher. He likes to sit at his desk or sit on top of the student desk when he teaches because he really wants to make sure that his students are engaged in the lesson. Mr. Cook told me that when he was in school his health teacher would just sit at his desk and he would not really “teach” and he

The main purpose for this observation was to see if there was a teacher who visits the classroom to provide inclusion services, how many times a week does the inclusion teacher visit, and what subjects does he/she come for. I came to see that there is an inclusion teacher that visits the classroom. The inclusion teacher visits the classroom twice every two weeks. This inclusion who is a female visits the classroom to take a look at how Mrs. Carroll is teaching her class, and if she’s teaching her students in a learning and teaching way instead of giving the students the answers.

In her class, there was a time where I was there when a student was saying that another student was cheating because he kept looking at his work. Ms. Gaines was trying to ignore him, but then she went closely to him, and separated the students. But she let him know if she disrupted her class again that there would be no recess for him.

| |the intellectual conversation of topics that were discussed. I also enjoyed the learning |

Mrs. Cirrincione has a structured morning routine. After welcoming the students, she takes attendance while the students read, sharpen pencils, and exchange books. ELA is first. While students are working silently on spelling, Mrs. Cirrincione walks around the room connecting with each student. Overall throughout the day, I noticed Mrs. Cirrincione was very engaged, never sitting at her desk unless she was conferring with a student one-on-one. Dr. Cornell, the

I observed Mrs.Delks classroom and right away I noticed that she and her classroom was very welcoming. Her classroom was very organized every day and you could tell the students really respected her. The children never back talked her and even at times when they did have time that they got in trouble for something she never had to yell or made them feel unfordable. You could tell that there was some type of love/trust relationship she had with her children. During the days that I was able to visit her classroom she had a student teacher at the time. She was very upfront with me and she told me that having help from her student teacher helped her out a lot. She said it was very hard to do everything on her own every day.

Throughout the lessons, Miss. Turner keep the class actively engage in learning. She did this, for example, by not using over using one type of teaching method for to long. For an illustration, she would consistently change activities like watching a video to reading every 10 to 15 minutes. A great example of her getting the students engaged would be, how she used the video about the doughnut, to grab the class’s attention and then incorporated the topic into the lesson plan. One classroom management strategy she used to keep the students engaged, was to regularly ask if the students if they had a connection to the settings or the plot of the books they were reading. By doing this, she kept the student interested in their lesson because they

What comes to your head when you think of writing? Personally, I think of a long dreadful process, that I am not particular too good at. Even though one half of my brain wants to hate writing, the other half realizes how important of a quality writing really is. Over my high school and middle school years I have learned many of my own deficits when it comes to writing. Attempting to over come many these deficits in my writing, I attempt to seek perfection in my limited strengths. I am going to discuss assets and weaknesses of mine, that make me believe that I am no better than just a average writer.

On Sunday, December 3, 2017, I delivered my first oral presentation on Janette, a peer in my Communicating Effectively course at Manhattanville College. The objective of the project was to familiarize yourself with a classmate, ask/answer questions provided by Professor Brosnan, and then share the knowledge you gained about the individual in a two-minute presentation. The presentation was required to introduce the classmate, what graduate program they are pursuing, why he/she is in the program, their long-term career goal(s), current occupation, favorite class, and an interesting fun fact. The oral presentations were done in the classroom without any visual aid, allowing you to use notes if preferred. By analyzing my 1 minute and 25 second presentation using the “7 Step Presentation Process” I uncovered my strengths and weaknesses as a presenter.

The internship for Optimist International has turned out to be more than I could have ever expected. It all started with a bit of luck as I missed out on the initial internship that included assisting two managers that were in charge of an annual convention in New Orleans and an annual golf tournament located in Florida. Instead, I was tasked with assisting the convention director with the tasks leading up to the convention. As I settled into the internship the tasks quickly evolved in to a variety of tasks that covered a large number of aspects in the business world. In the beginning of the internship, it felt like I had to prove myself to the management involved, but as the internship moved on, I believe I gained more trust with the faculty and I began to get tasks associated directly with management. There was an onsite representative in New Orleans that was in charge of finding community service opportunities that members could participate in the buildup to convention. I was tasked with setting up the time and dates for an emergency kit assembly project for Save the Children and helping paint two rooms at a local culinary school for at-risk teens, called Café Hope. I was able to reach out to contacts with

From 10:30 am to 11:15, I was with Ms. Janice Bluhms, who is a first grade teacher. Her class is comprised of twenty one students out of which only one female student was being considered to be assessed for emotional and behavioral disorder. The topics being taught in Ms. Bluhm’s classroom throughout my observation were addition and subtraction. Lastly, on my first and last day of observation from 11:15 am to 12:20 pm, I observed Ms. Jennifer Blankenship, who is a fifth grade Math and Science teacher. Her class had twenty four students and was specifically for the Gifted and Talented students. Even though I was assigned to four teachers, I mostly took notes in Ms. Parker’s class because she was more involved with students of special populations than any other teacher.

Her class of teachers take their jobs very seriously, and do not tolerate students who skip or disrupt their classes. These teachers are fun, because once you get them off on some irrelevant tangent, they will keep themselves going on it for entire class segments, trying to get out years of thought and consideration in just a short period of time. This is how I got to know my psychology teacher, because I was the one who kept her talking, so that the class could avoid taking the quiz that none of us had studied for. Teachers like her have the innate gift to educate and entertain, with their comprehensive lessons and subtle quirks.