Reflection Paper

When I first decided to expand my education, it had been so long since I had been to school, and I was very hesitant. I talked at length about my decision with my husband and with his encouragement, decided to enroll but still was not quite sure which degree program to enroll in. I knew that this was something that I had always wanted to do since I obtained my Associates Degree in Nursing, but I did not have the courage, nor did I want to give up the time with my family and children. I second guessed my abilities and my knowledge because it had been so long since I had been in college. Now that my children are about to graduate high school and

Here I stand on the brink of adulthood, a daunting place to exist. I peer over the edge and gaze into a chasm, bright but blurry. I am afraid. I am anxious. But I am hopeful. I am hopeful because I know that my past has defined me, but it is my future that will continue to mold me. As my years as a teenager draw to a close, I find myself reflecting on pivotal moments that taught me what it really means to be a good human being.

Every year since I was I child, I have attended camp and was presented a new challenge to accomplish there. One year for example, the challenge was to build a boat that wouldn't leak . The only materials we were given were plastic sheets, duck tape, cardboard, and spray paint. My cabin and I struggled at first as to how to build the boat. So my friend and I started thinking of a plan that everyone would agree too. We would first tape over the gaps on the card board then for extra protection we put three layers of the plastic inside and out and sealed it down with the duck tape. Things were going well until we tested the boat in which it leaked and started sinking. My cabin started arguing about whose fault it was for it not floating. After I broke up the argument, I suggested we add more layers of plastic and more duct tape. After the repairs we made to the boat, it was a success and ready to take to the lake for the competition. We ended up winning the competition which brought great satisfaction to me knowing how hard I and the rest of my team had worked .

I decided to interview my mom, Maria, who is 51 and lives in Chelan, Washington. I selected my mom because she has lived in two different countries and was able to reflect on similarities and differences that she noticed. My mom grew up in Mexico, as a child she lived in a city, when she got into her teens her family moved to a small town in the southern part of Mexico and as an adult she moved to the US. I began the interview by asking my mom what sustainability was to her. She responded by saying sustainability is the ability to provide her family with the basics needed for their well-being while not being wasteful. According to Kuhlman and Farrington, “sustainability is concerned with the well-being of future generations and in particular with irreplaceable natural resources” (Kuhlman and Farrington, 2). It was interesting to compare both definitions as they both focused on the well-being of the future, and although my mom did not mention natural resources she did emphasize not being wasteful.

I’ll say right off the bat, this course was definitely more than just a history lesson for me. It was an exploration of ideas from the past, and I learned how those ideas can trickle down into the present and future. If I had to do it over again, I would definitely pay more attention to the legends, folktales, and out of class readings we had discussed since they are so rich in life lessons and human nature. Even learning about how the different cultures lived can teach these lessons as well. Maybe I was too naïve before: I expected this to be a boring history class, but ended up learning a lot about life in the end. If you look for some sort of insight, chances are you’ll probably find what you’re looking for.

Through reflection teachers better understand and extends their professional activity (Churchill 2015, p.486). One who can reflect critically, can comprehend why a lesson worked or didn’t worked, and build on from these experiences to understand ways different learners learn and develop their teaching practices. Throughout this report, I critically analyse the strengths and weaknesses of a mathematic sequence in money for a grade one/two class. I also reflect on potential and missed opportunities, and threats to my teaching and the students’ learning. Initially, I was given a unit plan (Appendix two) that was not suited for this class. My mentor and I designed a unit plan which better suited for greater differentiation and enacted it, rather than the original one. In the body of this report, I have analysed the teaching of three lessons; lesson one, lesson two and lesson five of the sequence.

It all started in Elementary school, there I was a small little 3rd grader finding her way through. I remember having those assessments where the teacher would call you over, sit you down and they would time your reading and mark each word you mispronounced. At parent conferences, my teacher would tell my parents that I read at a 4th grade level. As the years went by, I always found the English subject being the easiest subject for me and I never had an issue with it. I think that the reason I didn’t have an issue with it was because when I was at school the only language I spoke was English while at home all I spoke was spanish. Both my parents are not fluent english speakers, but even though they weren’t, they always reminded me that it was important to read and write. They told me it was a way to attain more knowledge and improve and learn more vocabulary at a

Everyone has at least one point in their educational life that has shaped them into the student or person they are today. For me, coming together after being separated as the “Germantown” and “Farmersville” kids for the first six years of school changed the way I built myself as a student. Becoming friends with new people, having new teachers for every subject, changing up the routine, and actually having to switch classes has taught me a lot of different things.

While taking classes at BSU this semester and when doing my interview with Mindy Elliot. I have learned many things about myself, other people, and education. I fall in the behaviorism, pragmatism, and progressivism. I believe that one’s behavior and the behavior of others influence how we learn. I believe that we learn by doing, we learn by working, and we learn from others.

"A failure isn’t a failure if it prepares you for a successful tomorrow." This quote by Lolo Jones has kept me calm for the past two years because if I gave up after every failure I’ve overcame in track I would not be sitting in this class or even attending Slippery Rock for that matter. As cliché as it sounds, everything does happen for a reason. I learned this the hard way during my junior and senior years of high school. Even though most of my experiences from being on the track team are positive, I ended my junior and senior year with the same feeling; regret and feeling like there was more I could’ve done to prevent myself from having to end my season earlier than I initially intended.

There will be times in life that knocks you down so hard that you feel as if you don’t have the strength to get back up. It is all about how you handle the situations that show just how strong you truly are. All my life I have been a victim of bullying. Every time the bullies came to me I acted strong but once I got home I would lock myself in my bedroom for hours crying asking God what have I done wrong, and why me. The bullying had gotten so bad that it had led up to depression. I have tried cutting and overdosing more than once. But nothing was there to ease the pain that I had felt. One day I didn’t eat. That one day lead to a week, which leads to a month, which led to 3 months. I lived off half a baby plate of food for dinner a day because my mindset was saying to me that I needed to be skinny for people to like me. So, yes I was physically starving myself at the age of 14. Once it was time for Freshman year to start I finally felt beautiful, at least that is what I had thought. Shortly within the school year, the bullying came back and the depression hit me in the face once again. This time I wasn’t trying to starve, I was eating excessively and I wasn’t cutting. I wasn’t doing anything but lying down in my bed with earbuds in trying to isolate myself. People think that depression is just sadness. It isn’t. Depression is when you feel completely empty. You start to think and wonder what the future hold for you but yet all you see is black because you start to see a

A few weeks go I was standing awkwardly in the commons area of my church. Teenagers surrounded me all of which were avoiding eye contact, absorbed into their phones. “No worries,” I thought, “It’s all good.” Then, I heard a scream, “Mrs. Farmer!” One sweet young lady grabbed a hold of me so tight I could hardly breathe, but I was so grateful. Then, I realized it was one of my students from the first full year of teaching. This young lady came from the most difficult home life, and I could hardly imagine what she went through, but no matter what–every day she came to school with a bright smile on her face. She inspired me every day as a teacher that year, and seeing her again just brightened my day. What struck me the most about our conversation was that she remembered dancing in my class and how much she loved it, and it meant so much to her. It’s truly moments like that, moments we’ve all had, that remind us why we became teachers–why it’s such a gift.

Life represents a culmination of unforeseen events that eventually lead to success, and in the minds of the majority college symbolically defines the first major obstacle one must overcome to continue that journey. Every year, high school students across the nation eagerly anticipate the coming of their senior year and the rapidly approaching adventure to follow, but for many it simply reminds them of the heartache that is soon to come. My own personal experience began with the blinding influence hope cast over my judgement as inner levels of excitement exponentially increased and my emotions became steadily influenced by the people surrounding me. However, little was I aware that my future had already been decided and no external force would have the necessary impact to reconfigure my current course. In a sense, my ship had already sailed and was leading me in ironclad chains to foreign lands of which my presence was to be forced. College, to me, would soon become an indescribable burden where reality would suddenly become brutally clear and all hopes for a productive future existed upon the fate of an unstable pendulum.

Every student deserves the best chance at getting the highest level of education they can, however, some students need a little extra support that others may not. A student, Axel, who is currently in my classroom has had a hard time keeping his focus and is often avoidant when it comes to his work. It has become clear that his avoidance becomes a distraction to the whole class. His behaviors currently include but are not limited to: rolling around on the floor during rug lessons, yelling across the room, walking around the room talking to friends, sharpening his pencil five or more times throughout the day, asking to go to the bathroom at inappropriate times, spending fifteen to twenty minutes in the

From the early moments of my childhood, I remember seeing my parents go to Russian Orthodox Church a lot. They would explain to my younger brother and me what was right and what was wrong from the religious perspective. On my 4th birthday, my grandma gave me the Bible for kids as a present, and I remember my mom reading it to me before going to bed. Back then it was just another interesting story that happened somewhere very far away. And yet mom would always find a way to tell these stories in such a manner so they translated really well into the reality we were living in. The more I grew up the more I realized that there was something missing in the big picture of my understanding of the world. I saw a lot of suffering that was happening everywhere, death, natural disasters, and I thought there must be a reason for all of it. Otherwise, the God does not care about any of us. I started to look for the answers everywhere: in the philosophical and religious books, movies, wise counsel from the people who lived a long life. I could not find the truth in church because the whole purpose of its existence with all its rules and restrictions, its idea of God who is something or someone out there, separate from us, and the only being that knows all the answers, was totally alien to me; mainly so due to my unwillingness to accept the fact of transferring all the responsibility for everything one does to someone else. I believed it to be a weakness to acknowledge one’s bad thoughts and deeds as something natural, as an external influence of the evil spirits. For me, it sounded like people who agreed with this concept simply wanted to escape the punishment for what they had done, choose an easy way out.