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.

Genesis, a theological document, draws on our belief in God by observing His Creation. Genesis reminds us that Creation is good, God rejoices over it, God creates in freedom and playfulness, God’s word is creative and we can continue God’s creative work and keep its harmony. This is evident through many bible stories such as Genesis 3: The Garden of Eden story. The fall or perhaps the rise of humanity and the original sin.

For a long time i was different from the other guys. From the toys i played with to the clothes I like to wear. I was in 6th grade the first time i had feeling towards a guy. I was scared and ashamed of theses feeling. As time passed the feelings only became stronger and I fell further into the closet. Middle school was hard, i was bullied and called gay, a faggot, queer, even before i consider my gay or told anyone. When highschool came along it became harder and harder as the days went on to keep the secret in. I just wanted to be like everyone else but i was a young man with a secret, a secret that weighed down on me with so much force. It hurt constently, a wound that felt couldnt be heald. I indulged in many self destructive behaviors to suppress and hide my feelings. I was losing myself in the closet. i felt trapped, like i could never leave. I wanted to leave this closet i was stuck in but i was to scared to be ridiculed even further than i already had been. One day i gussed up the courage on a drunken night and told one of my friends on a frozen over lake that i was bi. The feelings i felt that night of finally opening up made me feel a bit more hole. So slowly one at a time i told my frends i was bi. I even made a fake MySpace profile to help me come out of this dark closet. Silly i know but i was so scared to do this on my own. I left highschool after being in the hospital for depression issues for not being able to look at myself in the mirror. even tho i had

I grew up in church and in a Christian home which I do appreciate because some people do not have the opportunity as I do. Personally, my domination is a Methodist because my father is a full time Methodist pastor. My faith when I was younger was weak, because we for example had a dress code for my family on Sunday we had to wear Sunday best (girls are not allowed to wear blue jeans). We had to set examples for others. My dad talked about it does not matter what clothing you wear if you have clothing on. All that matters are that we are here to worship the one and only savior. Now that I look back my view on Jesus as a little kid would have to be a Judgmental God and a Gocha God because my step mom would want us to seat an example while we were at church and we would always get in trouble if we do something wrong in church. In the summer of my Middle school year I went to Camp Loucon and my faith grew stronger because one night during worship I felt a tug on my heart. The tug you cannot get rid of. I knew Jesus needed a home in my heart. So, I went up to the alter the Dean of the camp came up to me and said what do you want me to pray for I said accepting Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior. When he was done praying I felt this piece of calmness, and such greater joy that I can’t explain. I felt so happy I started to cry. (I usually never cry). Later that night my cabin laid on a basketball court at camp and looked at the stars. I said, “there’s a lot of stars up there”.

Do you know why you are still overweight? Do you understand the reason why you can't lose weight or not be able to keep it down and when you do you just jump back the other side plots as a bonus a few extra kilos you don't want?

In our everyday lives, we tend to categorize people because of their race, culture, their socioeconomic status, and judge people by their looks, age, ability, and gender. When I was working at a daycare past summer of grade 9, I met one Chinese girl who was around 4-5 years old. One time I witness her classmates making fun of her because she has a asian accent when she talks in English, her eyes are small, her mom works at a restaurant with low pay. Even during break, I would always see her sitting in a corner all alone, while others were having fun. Therefore, I took the courage to talk to her. Throughout the conversation, I realized that she was mad at herself because she has a different race from others, language barrier between her and her classmates and she was ashamed of her mother working at a restaurant because other parents work at a higher pay occupation.

She compared her life to a hurricane, a natural disaster that took everything in its path and destroy any shred of light in her life. Thus, the weeks turned into years of regressive behavior that led her to believe that she was not good enough to truly be herself. She only allowed herself to be her mother’s puppet, an item only used for public occasions, for if she ever became her own self, she would be outcasted. Yet, during those times I recall a shout in the cave of darkness, a murmured voice saying: Carpe Diem. Seize the day. My brother used those words when I was little —he was an extroverted fellow who vocalized whatever he felt because he was confident in whom he was. Nevertheless, I was an introverted, insecure, and self-conscious kid who was silenced by the public because they scared me. Fear ruled my actions. Fear ruled my mind. Fear ruled me; yet, my brother’s words rang a certain alarm in my head when I grew up. Thus, I realized that my individuality was stolen. My silence was bought, and my uniqueness was used as a weapon for society’s cruel expectations. I noticed that the world has so many beliefs, ideas, and aspirations that I wanted my own drum to beat in my own rhythm.

This summer has been quiet a busy time to say the least. Since I recently started a new job, I was unable to partner with an organization for my community engagement project. Instead, I worked with my neighbor, Betty, who is 78 years old woman who has recently transitioned home from a six week stay in a rehabilitation center due to a severe fall that prompted her stay. Betty was discharged after Medicare would no longer cover her stay at the rehabilitation center. When she returned home, she returned to home where her grandson stayed but could not relyed on. Betty was basically on her own at home, unable to walk, care for herself the way she was used to, and felt that her needs were not being met upon her return. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on how my personal involvement has been service oriented, helped her achieve her goal, and ¬¬¬to critically reflect on the integration this course has provided in carrying out this assignment.

I feel that there is a great divide within my life at its current point. I live in two different spaces depending on the time, and while they are a great distance from each other geographically, they are at an even greater distance culturally. I grew up in a small town in New York State that was majority conservative and I now live on a college campus that is extremely liberal. Before I arrived at college I felt that I had already grasped an understanding of my various privileges as an individual on the micro level. However, being here and having to face them head-on through the meso level Swarthmore community is a completely different experience. Because I identify as a pansexual, neuroatypical woman there are certain power structures such as patriarchy and heteronormativity that I tend to concern myself more with. However, despite my various privileges (or perhaps because of them), I should focus an equal amount of attention on those power structures that benefit me. It would be foolish and hypocritical of me to call out men or heterosexuals to fight against their own privileges without in turn doing the same of my own. Therefore I would like to reflect on those privileges in order to better understand how they interact in my daily life on the micro, meso, and macro levels in order to better understand myself and to “think not only beyond privilege, but beyond the sense of self that claims privilege.”

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.

Since arriving on campus, I have been asked how I came to Miami several times. Some would say that coming here is destiny, but I disagree. Psalm 139 says that before I was born, “in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them” (NKJV, Psalms 139:16). While there are several main components about which I will write, I keep coming back to the fact that God placed me here.

Writing is a tool that will be used throughout my lifetime. It is a tool that is worth taking the time to perfect because it will only be beneficial in the long run. On my writing assignments, I earn A’s, but I still have areas that I need to work on. The areas that I struggle the most would be with simple grammar errors such as the use of commas, writing with an active voice, and writing short,simple sentences. First of all, I often do not know where to place commas in my sentence. I struggle with this because I tend to add commas in the wrong place, so I have become confused with the proper use of commas. This is a small grammar error that I can easily correct by learning where and when commas are needed. I have also found and been told that I write in a passive voice when I should be using an active voice. This is a technique that I have to work on by practicing it and noticing the difference while I am writing and reading. Finally, I often write run on sentences or sentences that include unnecessary information. This makes my writing unclear and difficult for the reader to understand. I could improve by writing shorter and simpler sentences that include only the essential information to get my point across. I have noticed these mistakes in my writing and it has also been brought up by others, so I am currently working on improving it.

Over the course of the semester we have done numerous writing assignments in order to help us dig deeper into topics that we might not have known about previously and to improve our writing skills. I have never been an excellent writer. I’ve had trouble planning out where details would go in my past papers. However, there has been a clear improvement in my writing when looking back on the work that I have done in this class.

Every school has these four main academic subjects: English, Math, Science, History/Geography. The class I like the most in my eighth grade school year is History. This is because we get to learn about different time periods, different people, different religions, and so much more. We don't just sit in class and read out of a textbook. We get to do fun activities to help us understand more. While we work, we talk to our teacher and have funny and weird conversations. We make fun of each other and have a good laugh. I'm always excited to go to History class.

To go along with being an athlete, I am a student. To be able to get playing time, you need to have good grades. My parents didn’t just push me to be a good athlete, but to get good grades. I had higher expectations compared to my brother. But that pushed me to keep my grades up and do get an A on assignments and tests. This impacted who I was and what I decided to value. It was important to my parents that I got good grades, but to me it was too because it helped me get into college and it made me feel good about myself. Being a student, just like being an athlete, teaches me to be diligent in the work that I have in front of me. It also teaches me time management, and what I need to get done compared to going out with my friends.