Reflection Of Education

During my time at Teachers College, I have expanded my knowledge of writing and teaching lessons in a way that engages my students while meeting their needs. Many times I have been challenged to think beyond the traditional lesson and consider ways to make the lesson innovative and engaging while meeting standards and student needs. Some lessons took longer and were tougher than others to plan, and there were times when it was harder to make something students found dull into something exciting. It is these topics that challenged me to rethink the way that I could present the material in a more relevant way that gave students a chance to engage in activities. During every step of the lesson from planning, teaching, to the post-teaching reflection that I was challenged to think about what went well, what students really liked, and what I could do better.

An intersectional reflection of my dichotomous relationship with higher education is what fuels my desire to pursue a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis. As a first-generation college student, earning a Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees profoundly altered the trajectory of my family out of years of generational poverty. As a result of embracing higher education, I possess the ability to think critically and creatively, with a passion and hunger for lifelong learning. Contrarily, the experience also left some biological, psychological, and social scarring. Macroaggressions, tokenism, and implicit bias have all contributed to the way that I now live, learn, and work in the world. While these experiences did not prevent the completion of my education, it has led others to abandon the pursuit, and certainly presents an enigma to many colleges and universities around the country eager to recruit and retain scholars that identify as Black/African-American, first-generation, and/or low socioeconomic status. The majority of my professional experience revolves around this very conundrum and the time has now come to pursue extensive and original research in this chosen field.

The term “reflection” comes from the Latin term reflectere which means “to bend back”. A mirror does this. It bends back the light so that you can see what your face looks like. In education, reflection means to look back at experiences of learning and think about them. The act of reflection becomes the bridge between experiences and learning.

During my K-12 education I feel that it taught me how to fake it until I make it. You think school teaches you how to be an adult in the real world but it only teaches you how to be complaint. I never really thought about what I gained as a member of society. I think school tried to teach me where my place is. I learned how even though this is 2017 and women don’t have to sit and look pretty, students are expected to sit and look pretty so to speak. For 12 years to earn a piece of paper I learned that I am expected to follow traditional rules and methods. I am expected to do as my teacher says because their title is teacher that means according to society they are smarter and better than you. I learned that my opinion and my thoughts have no merit compared to people with more experience. So thank you to 12 years of sitting in a class for 8 hours everyday to learn how to fake compliance.

think I went a little overboard with the information. As I reflect on my curriculum I thought about the fact that maybe I wasn’t being as realistic with the time I spend creating the curriculum. One aspect I pondered about was the time frame that is given to teachers so they can work on their curriculum. I assume it’s a little different than the time we have in a preschool setting. I presently teach two part day classes back to back which leaves little room for planning my curriculum. I think that in the higher grades teachers probably don’t have as much time as I spend on my curriculum for this course. As I reflect on this information I realize I have to set realistic and attainable timelines.

When we started this eight week course about differentiation I already had a lot of background information on this subject. I did learn a few things about how to help my colleagues jump on the bandwagon of differentiation. By helping my fellow teachers change their mindset towards planning with differentiation in mind I am making a positive difference in my students’ educational experience. When differentiation is used properly students are taught lessons in ways that are both meaningful and specific to the students’ educational needs. Differentiation is a great tool that teachers can use to help decrease the educational gap between students skills and the grade-level standards that they should be meeting.

God, the Ruler and Creator of every finite and infinite existence in the universe, has called me to a life of love, servitude, and fellowship with other Christians. However, at my age, my walk with Christ is no longer conjoined with decisions made by my parents. The decision of college is entirely mine to make with the benevolent and ever-wise guidance of Christ. By no means is this an easy task, but one ideal has been forthright in my heart-- my education must be Christ-centered.

After reading and learning about literacy for the past month, I have come to understand a bit more about how I was brought up as a student. For a majority of my high school career, there were not many teachers that seemed to bring literacy into their content areas; however, there was one particular teacher that I took in my senior year for a Film Literature class that was significantly different than the others at my school. To begin with, his classroom setup extraordinarily different than any regular teacher’s classroom. It was broken down into three sections, also known as “families”. There was a section with regular desks, a section of couches and bean bag chairs, and a section with stools and podiums. Throughout the school year, we would rotate “families” and spend about a month in a different section. From my teacher’s point view, this was to exhibit different learning styles as we would be sitting in different areas of the room as well as on a different seat in various orientations. It allowed the workspace to remain adaptable and the orientation of the “families” left opportunities for easier group discussion and activities. In addition to the “families”, from basic bookshelves, to plastic containers, cardboard boxes, and even a tree stump, there was a plethora of books stored in various areas of the room. Furthermore, the entire room was covered in a wide variety of posters and had mobiles dangling from the ceiling. There was almost no wall to be seen.

I have had the experience to teach the class four times during the semester and each of them has helped me to learn a lot. Dr. Walenciak has been traveling a lot so I have been in charge of the class those times. The first time, I was terrified the day before of the class. I needed to talk about the chapter of Ostrander’s book that talks about the history of Christian education. I prepared myself a lot and the day of the class I divided the time so the students could work on a project that we have. I try to summarize the chapter while explaining it. I planned to talk for 25 minutes and I ended up talking for 15 minutes. I was talking too fast and skipping important points without realizing about that. At the time of the class, I felt confident but I was a little nervous and it was harder to express my ideas in English but I manage to overcome that. I was able to explain everything but I was a little disappointed that I could not meet my time goal. After that, I ask them some questions to see if they have understood the topic. It was interesting because I could feel somehow the feeling of the teacher when nobody participates in the class. At the beginning, everyone was quiet but after a while, they start participating. To finish the class, I gave them some time to get in groups and discuss their progress for the final project. I asked for some feedback after that to some students and they told me

Education can be defined as a “system.” For some people education is a means to get a well-paid vocation and that is all. There seems to be an inequality regarding to our social statues and education. In my perspective, I think that education should be equal for everyone; and we should get the opportunity to learn. Education should be defined as something that we can all afford and are capable of achieving. To have our own ideas,

Have you ever wondered about the way the education system is carried out in the United States? How about if students from small towns are at a disadvantage? Coming from a small town, my high school was exactly like the typical American high school described by Amanda Ripley, in her book, “The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way.” After reading this book and taking careful notes, I now see many relationships between her book and my old high school, which I will describe in this piece. My high School, Wellsboro Area High School, was disorganized, lacking rigor because of many factors, including sports, biased, and lacked teacher confidence. Now, finally in college, I get to reflect on my experience and speak the truth about what I thought while in the education system.

Education is viewed differently for everyone, some think it is the easiest thing to accomplish, others cannot last more than half an hour in a classroom without feeling lost. In my own experience, I bit off more than I could chew when I decided to take AP Language. I went into my junior year thinking I was going to be an amazing student and stay on top of my assignments and once they started stacking my grade started falling. I thought the class wasn’t going to be a challenge for me because I left my sophomore honors class with an A. Boy was I wrong, half of the time the teacher would blow my mind with knowledge then leave me in a “what just happened” mental state. I wasn’t really grasping what the teacher was saying. It was not the teacher’s fault I just didn’t pick up what she was putting down it was like my mind was shutting down. I got to point where I wanted to drop the class. I would be in my room trying to think of ways I could drop the class and still stay on track for my honors diploma. I finally had the guts to go to my counselor to switch classes,but by that time it was too late. My idiotic prideful self didn’t want to go in and get help. until my grade dropped to a low C. Then I had to choose between life and pride, because my mom wouldn’t let me see the light of day if I brought home a C. When I left the counselor's office, I thought all hope was lost there was no way in hell I was going to get an A or B in the class. Until Mrs. Cannaday threw a rainbow into

America's victory against Great Britain in 1786 not only gained them independence but the status of a world superpower; where the world would watch our every move and imitate it. Now, 241 years later we still stand as one of the superpowers of the world. Yet, our testing scores place 31st in the world. Which is why our government has been working on improving our education system, hoping to improve our scores. Yet even with all the attention on improving our system, there haven't been many changes; and our test scores have barely risen. If so many people believe education isn't going down the right path, then why hasn't it changed, in so many years? International testing scores are rising and surpassing ours. Yet, the United States is not making progress in growing educational programs. Over the years we have seen other countries education scores rise, and surpass ours. Despite our current efforts, it raises the question, when will we actually improve our education, and catch up with the world? Even though there have been some changes, our education needs to reworked, and re evaluated, so our scores will rise, and we can catch up with the rest of the world.

My path to the education field relied heavily on the context in which I grew up, and the demographic environment had a bigger hand in that decision than I probably considered at the time. Throughout my elementary years, I moved a few times. The schools I was attending were more or less similar to one another despite the fact that, as my dad got better the better jobs that were moving us around, we were living in somewhat increasingly better school districts. They were all rated somewhat well by their respective states, predominantly white, and governed by the concerns of upper-middle class school districts (i.e., flash over substance; the latest technology, new classroom equipment, impressive school productions and functions, etc.) By the time I was in fifth grade though, we had settled back into our hometown, and I was finally able to spend more than two years in a row at the same school even if most of the ones before had not been all that distinguishable from one another.

According to Kelleher (2016), Bandura defines self-efficacy “as one’s belief in his or her ability to perform a given task” (p. 70). Learning is the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and abilities that an individual accumulates throughout their lifespan. Learning is established by a series of tasks, observations or modeling, and environmental factors. It can also be influenced by prior knowledge. It is strongly impacted by one’s culture, beliefs, values, and socioeconomical status. Part of the learning process is how information is encoded and stored in the brain as short-term or working memory, and the ability to recall information is vital to student success. From an educational standpoint, teachers are taught every student is unique with a learning style all their own.