Reflection Paper

Science Instructional Analysis and Methods class has afforded me countless learning experiences which I have taken into my intern classroom. I have several take away for this fall’s science methods course. The first being, in Methods class I learned to work in distinct groups of with peers of various levels. My peers who are experiencing classroom teaching for the first time and the graduate interns. Surprisingly, I learned from working with both of these groups. From the graduate level students, I was able to actually make a connection with the content we read about in our text and experiences I had everyday in internship. I appreciate the opportunity, as I felt safe and free to ask questions about the experiences they had in teaching science. I commend you on the way you had broken up the class groups, and afforded us to work with different groups. During this process, I feel I have started to find my voice as a professional. This opportunity allowed me to be more confident to voice my ideas to the teachers I worked with in internship, as I contribute to my PLC group.

Thinking about my own experiences with doctors and hospitals I have a situation that was benefited through words of comfort. I am not a health care provider so my own experiences may be different but I feel that words of comfort art most needed in times of emergencies. For example, I was a a majorette for my whole school at the age of 16 I was preforming during a half time show when my hip dislocated. My parents could not attend this game so the only thing they could do was to try to relax me in the

Pastors need mentors, mentees, and true peers. I have enjoyed a long-standing relationship with two pastor colleagues both in very different places in life and ministry. Yet, even from these different places, all three of us share some very basics understandings and needs as we strive to serve the church. Rev. Bev Dempsey and Rev. Nikki Brown Rice are the two selected clergy persons I chose for this connection exercise. All the best plans were intended to email and create a great long thread of emails to turn in. One thing we all have in common is that we are much better face-to-face connections than in email. Therefore, when given the chance to decide to connect through email versus personal conversations, we all agreed on personal conversations.

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger” Friedrich Nietzsche. One of the quotes that comes to mind if I were asked to represent my junior year in high school. By far this school year has to be one of the toughest I have yet experience. I faced myself with personal issues leading to a lack of motivation for anything really. My personal issues really affected my school work and restricted me from the joys of living for a short period of time. I found myself lacking in energy and enthusiasm for school. School became a burden. I had to juggle my school life with the pain of losing my Godfather. I struggled gaining the strength to get back to who I am truly. The talkative energetic girl who finds her ways to overcome the challenges she faces with a positive overlook. The loss of such an important figure in my life was difficult. Experiencing a hard break of such kind really affected me, but with the support of my loved ones I overcame the hardships and stand stronger today.

“We need all empty hospital beds to the trauma center now!” I, the baby-faced medical scribe, yelled to the medical staff in D-pod of the ER. Ten police officers and two citizens had been shot in nearby downtown Dallas. I was assigned to work with Dr. Schaff who instructed me to recruit the open beds needed to accommodate the influx of patients. Walking into the frantic trauma room, I appeared with a blank face, dazed by the situation. I regained a perceptive state of mind when Dr. Schaff began asking me details about a patient while telling me to track down an extra tourniquet for a heavily bleeding gunshot wound to the leg. In such a chaotic situation, I became amazed by Dr. Schaff’s skill to quickly assess and treat the patient to allow a higher chance of full recovery. The patient’s wife arrived at the ER and was overcome with emotions. As Dr. Schaff entered the room, she was still in shock from her husband’s condition. Dr. Schaff proceeded to sit down and have a long and considerate conversation with her. Her tear-covered face transformed to a glimmering smile when she realized her husband would make a full recovery, and she joyfully hugged Dr. Schaff. Watching Dr. Schaff interact with her gave me an intoxicating feeling I had never experienced. It demonstrated to me that being a doctor involved not only scientific knowledge and skill, but also human compassion and interpersonal qualities.

The act of reading, writing, and listening to literature for enjoyment has always astounded me. Humans are the most complex animals on Earth, yet literature is still a novelty to some. It might be because of what we learn in school that turns us off from literature, but I may be different. I found a love for poetry and creative writing during my freshman year in high school. It was important for me to project what I could not say outloud, and that is where I felt unified with literature. When I put pen to paper, I felt like life had stopped and I was in the moment. Life became increasingly hard as I went through school, but each time I came back to writing, I felt as if I was drifting away in myself yet still in control. It was hard for me to find a way to cope with my ever changing life. The act of writing helped me tell my story in ways that I could not express to others due to our social expectations. Storytelling is important, for it provides a nessecary outlet in order to cope with life more easily.

Do you remember what your priorities were when you were eight years old? When I was that age (1965), I was in third grade. One of my jobs was to make breakfast on weekday mornings for some of my younger brothers and sisters. At that age, my primary goal was to figure out ways to get out of work around the house, so I could go outside and play with my cousins who lived in the neighborhood.

For an organizational analysis of my current context, I decided to select Option A: Adizes: Focus on Organizational Lifecycle. Everything has a lifecycle, from geological formations to people, societies, and civilizations. Of course, organizations, too, go through different stages – they grow, change, and then, they disintegrate. Even though none of this comes as a surprise to anyone, yet some organizations and their leadership may not be ready to embrace the change and still be sustainable and efficient. As Ichak Adizes boldly suggests in his book, "The challenge of leadership on any level – individual, family, organization, and society – is to change continuously and, nevertheless, always remain together" (1999, 9). As organizations go through different stages, each time they are presented with the peculiar challenges. In many cases, new difficulties cannot be resolved with the old methods and attitudes. Without abandoning their old customs, organizations can be at risk to stagnate or even fall apart as they advancing through numerous transitions. The majority of organizations would encounter similar lifecycle stages; however, they would need to develop certain abilities in order to advance forward in the lifecycle.

We first knew our Daughter’s was having issues in December of 2005, she was in her Freshman year in high school. We noticed that she had not been acting like her normal self. We confronted her about the problems and did not understand how bad they were. We did ask if she needed to talk someone, she didn’t want to, and we hoped she would get back to normal. We told her we loved her and didn’t want any harm to come to her and she could talk to us. I did tell her the next time I knew something was going on that she would be seeing someone to talk about her issues. The next month I received a call from the high school that she had broken through their firewall and had posted on a banded website. On this website she had posted about death and that she was cutting herself. We had noticed some injuries, but she always had an excuse for them, like falling on the ice. Before I picked her up from school after receiving the phone call I immediately called our doctor’s office told them what was going on and got her an appointment that day.

As a child, the number one question asked is “What do you want to be when you grow up?” A ludicrous question to ask a child who has no concept of the real world and real professions other than the ones that their parents have. Most children will answer with being a princess, a super hero; however, I would always say I wanted to work with kids. I thought I wanted to do so medically, but figured out Education was my calling instead. A notion that I was too blinded to see in the past, but so many others saw within me. Now that I am pursuing Education, Elementary Education to be exact, I would not have wanted it any other way. It is exciting taking all of the necessary courses that are preparing me to be a great teacher.

Education has always been something that I value in my life. It is the way that we can share knowledge with each other, and learn to develop as a society. Educating ourselves is the key to be able to connect with others. One of the most common ways we obtain learning experiences is through educational facilities. Every student in the classroom is there for the sole reason to complete the course to get closer to their graduation requirements. I, however, wanted more from my education.

I am a privileged person. I am white. I am upper-middle class. I am university educated. I am thin. I have parents who are still married to each other. I have always had some form of part time work since starting high school. I have no student debt. I am straight. I am Christian. I am an extrovert. I have a strong voice and an even stronger opinion. This made a class on inequality difficult to relate to but if anything, its shown that I do not have even the most basic understanding of what some of my less privileged peers go through everyday. Because of my privilege and powerful voice, I found it extremely difficult to express my opinions in this class because I either felt like a hypocrite or I felt domineering thus I took a silent position attempting to not only understand how some of my peers feel but also because I had never understood what it was like to be unable to share my individual opinions and stories. Although the silence was unintentional, as I went through reading my classmates posts I found myself frustrated because of something I differed in opinion on or because I felt that a grouping to which I belonged was being misrepresented and there was nothing I could do to address the situation.

“We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.” –Winston Churchill. I do remember my late grandfather narrating alluring anecdotes from his time in the Indian Air Force and a few of my late great grandfather’s heroics while he served in the British Army (1917-1946). I slowly started to develop a taste for war-time stories, military history as a whole which always intrigued me, possibly because of my family lineage. I am always curious to learn more about our past, about the mistakes made by our forefathers that however frivolous they may seem or sound but were enough to instigate a war.

When I moved from South Korea to Miami, I expected there to be many differences. What I didn’t foresee was that there were also some similarities. I assumed that moving from South Korea back to the United States, would be akin to going home. However, I discovered that coming to Miami was comparable to adjusting to a foreign country all over again. Both South Korea and Miami are lovely places to visit. One of them, however, is also a marvelous place to live.

Since I was a little girl, I was fascinated with the story of creation in Genesis. I must have been six or seven years old when I read it for the first time from the old Bible of my uncle. I remember being absolutely awestruck by the great power of God who ordered and things came to be. At that time, I imagined the author of the Biblical text as being an eyewitness to the creation and faithfully reporting of what he had seen. The first chapters of the Book of Genesis reflect on the mystery of God, the creator of everything that exists, the creator of heaven and earth. Everything that is, exists because God had