Reflection Paper

Carrie Fisher once proclaimed, “Stay afraid but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually, the confidence will follow.” I had to learn the hard way that confidence does not show up ready for you to utilize, just as the quote says. You have to put yourself out there and the confidence will develop. In the seventh grade, I joined the beginner band and chose to play the flute. Beginning band was far more terrifying than my twelve-year-old self imagined it to be. I learned that each student would have to perform in front of the class for a weekly grade. Even worse, the one other flute player next to me had already been playing for a year and I constantly compared myself to her. Later in that semester, this girl and I were talking and she said to me, “When we first started, I thought you were going to be the worst player in the band!” I was completely baffled that this girl, who had only been playing for a few more months than I had, would have the audacity to say that to my face. I did not understand that, at the time, it was okay for me to not play as well as she could. I had only been playing for a few weeks at most after all. Twelve year old me took it to heart and I felt like I was two inches tall. Sadly, that was not the last negative interaction I had with that girl. She stayed with me all throughout middle school, where she made fun of me for making last chair in eighth grade, and overall, put my

This lesson was geared toward many levels of learning ability and a variety of learning styles. Mrs. Soglin modeled the learning objective with the pan balance using the visual aid with the scale and a variety of different objects to be weighed. Then she provided additional information using the chalkboard. She engaged with the class by having an open discussion allowing the students to build on each other’s knowledge of the subject matter. She allowed for students to model for the class. When students were working in groups and pairs the higher level students helped lower level students. She also provided challenging problems at the end of the activity for those students who were ready and

On September 6, 2017, I were documented for an incident that involved a University Housing policy violation. I was charged with violating the University Housing Alcohol 1.2 policy. With my violation, came consequences. I met with The Residence Conduct Coordinator to discuss my actions and came to the conclusion that I would have to schedule a meeting with The Campus Alcohol and Drug Education Center (CADEC) and with that, a reflection paper.

I intentionally employ a mix of instructional strategies in the classroom in order to give my students a variety of opportunities in which to engage themselves and each other with new content. Most class periods provide chances for students to work individually, as partners and/or in groups and units include a variety of problem-solving tasks to help students understand how the skills are used. Although the students seem to

For my observation hours, I attended a first grade classroom at the Meadow View Elementary in Alabaster. My cooperating teacher's room was full of posters which she had created that featured strategies for counting, reading, and writing. She had created small reading corner, a another corner was Scholastic news, and a side of the room was dedicated to computers and iPads. My cooperating teacher had a total of nineteen students in her classroom and she had numbered all of them one through nineteen, randomly. She had arranged the student tables in small groups of four with an assigned table number to collaborative instructions and she had assigned the students according to heterogeneous groups, but during reading she had the students in homogeneous groups. My cooperating teacher had her table at the back of the room in order for her to see the entire classroom from her desk.

Growing up church was not a place we “had time” to attend, and God was not a part of our household. It was not until about four years ago, that I began my relationship with Christ. On July 18, 2011, I began to have nine plus seizures a day; I spent a lot of time in the hospital trying to get answers to my over-night attacks. During this time, I fell into a depression because of the lack of answers. I felt that I was just being given drugs to get me discharged. Many would send prayers, and ask me to come to church, but it was not something I wanted to do. At this point in my life, I held anger in my heart; going to church and hearing about a God I did not know didn’t make sense. My mother was my primary care taker, and dealing with my sickness was not easy. In 2013, she was invited to church by a co-worker, and she took me along with her for the “ride”. We attended citylife church, and from the moment worship began, I was in tears. While the Pastor was speaking, it was like he was speaking directly to me, and I thought to myself, “He must know about why I am so depressed.” At the end of the service, the Pastor asked for those who would like to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior to come up, and I could not get there fast enough. This is where my journey with Christ began, and I learned that it was not the Pastor who was speaking to me on this day. God already knew I would be in attendance on this day, and I needed to hear the message that was given through the Pastor. I

Being a Christian is not something that everyone accepts wholeheartedly. It, at times, brings about ridicule and resentment, and it is typically a matter in which most people will try to avoid talking about for the sole fact that they do not want to be questioned on their beliefs. Deciding to follow Jesus is a huge deal, and for me, this decision came when I was 14 years old.

We are all different in unique ways that make us who we are. Life comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, and orientations, and yet the only thing we, as a society, see is what makes up the best of these. So many people believe that being “different” is not acceptable in the world, and because of this, people deny themselves who they are and live in fear. I sadly found myself in the same situation, afraid and alone.

While every person’s testimony of conversion relates to how He came to know Christ, each individual has a story of how they got to the place of realizing his need for Jesus. For some, it was in a moment of desperation when they cried out to the Lord to save them, and for others, it was a call to the altar at a church service. I have never thought that I had one of those amazing conversion stories that one might read or hear about in chapel, but I have come to realize that because God brought me out of the darkness and into His grace, my story is just as amazing as anyone else’s.

In the beginning, this class frustrated me. I am the kind of left-leaning atheist feminist that, honestly, does not like to hear other people’s opinions if they differ greatly from my own. I knew that, since this was more of a discussion based class, my hands would be tied because of my lack of knowledge about anything religious. As discussed on the first day, religion is something that people are uncomfortable talking about, and the further I got in the term the more comfortable I became hearing other people’s opinions (I will touch on this even more later) and allowing myself to learn from their perspective. Through this class, I learned to listen to my peers even more and to allow myself to see the world from a believer’s standpoint. I also thoroughly enjoyed studying the nitty-gritty of Judaism, which was a subject that I doubt I would have ever been exposed to otherwise.

The First United Methodist Church of Monroe, Louisiana has essentially acted as a second home for me. Ever since I was a baby, I have been attending there. It is a place where I have

The lessons we take form obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you and what did you learn from the experience?

Throughout the course of the semester, the portfolio I have created in W233 has helped me gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of the writing process. Coming into the class, I felt confident in my abilities to write a good research paper. However, looking back on my former self, I now realize that there is much more to writing well. It is not all about using fancy, grandiloquent vocabulary and reading over drafts and revising and editing and following a prompt like a robot; writing truly becomes proficient when taking the road less traveled through extensively collecting research, refining the topic of the paper, analyzing and summarizing research, and showing a commitment to multiple drafts to refine a writing. I came a long way when I went through this advanced writing process over the semester. I started out with little knowledge of how to mediate an argument effectively and I went through two research ideas before I finally decided on a topic that I really felt I could discuss. When finally deciding on negotiating between advocates of GMOs and advocates of organic agriculture, I felt that it would be a pretty simple argument to mediate, but there ended up being much more to it than I expected. Moving from pre-writing stages and the abstract to the rhetorical analyses to the annotated bibliography and finally to the negotiation paper, I learned a lot in each phase about my topic and about the writing process.

Within my time in Child Protective Services, I had experienced a consistent amount of lying, which to me was a new experience. I was forced to adapt by listening to, two almost completely different stories, then pick out the similarities, and fill in the blanks. There were several times when a couple would lie for one another but have stories so far off that it was obvious neither were being truthful. We also had a family rehearse a story so that all of their stories did match one another’s but the injuries and marks were not consistent with the story at all. I do not tend to lie often because I found early on that honesty really is the best policy and I have always been my friend and families safe haven so no one has ever felt the need to lie to me as much as I experienced with CPS. I had to break my trusting habits and listen to everything as something that I will be investigating later to ensure it was the truth. In the training I was encouraged to read people or at least give it my best attempt. Investigator Samuel Nunez was extremely talented in this aspect and consistently quizzed me to ensure I was gaining the skill. There would be numerous actions one could do, or even different tones in their speech, or even switching their speaking patterns that he would be able to notice and predict why the change occurred. I found that when one is too trusting when investigating they would often look incompetent at the end of the case. Often times this is before a judge when one

Let me start off by saying the knowledge I gained during this course is unmatched. It was overall a fun course and gave me a deeper understanding of topics I had never previously explored in American History. The way the professor conducted the class was all around smooth. I must agree my group members and I have become lifelong friends. I didn’t believe at the beginning but here we are. Many topics were studied but some that stood out to me is how Abraham Lincoln is basically a fraud he did everything for the benefit of himself, Holocaust and how America help fund it, how slaves were treated and reparations, criminal justice system in America, Eugenics, also secrets inside the Army including the money we waste within the military (The weapon funding of Al Qaeda). Amongst other social issues.