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.

There are multiple reasons I am where I am today and why I’m going where I’m going. I have struggled in school ever since I can remember but without the people that I have had in my life I wouldn’t where I am today. But as I will talk about the teacher have played a huge role in the reason I am able to be where I am today.

As humans, we are created to be in a relationship with God. We are called to love and serve Him. However, because of our sins, we fail to honor God. It is through God’s love for us that he used Jesus Christ to restore our relationship with Him. The doctrine of the person of the Jesus Christ is the centerpiece of our Christian theology. As followers of Christ, it is essential that our understanding of Christ must be the center of our faith.

When asked to reflect on what I have learned in relation to Canada’s celebration of its 150th year the first word that comes to mind is ignorance. By celebrating Canada as a nation people are celebrating all types of histories, but many parts of Canada’s history should not be celebrated. Canada’s 150 is something that can be comparable to celebrating Columbus Day; a celebration of genocide. Moreover, the celebration of Canada’s 150 also disregards current struggles occurring within Indigenous communities, overlooking the multiple years and traumas that have tormented Indigenous women. The image of Canada as a successful and thriving melting pot is what the banners of Canada 150 convey. This works against its history as it erases and shadows the stories of trauma and resiliency that have occurred since the beginning of colonization. Overall, I have many personal opinions on Canada’s 150th but from my personal experience and from what I have learned in this class I find that this celebration negatively affects Indigenous people and condones the continuation of poor treatment towards Indigenous women in Canada.

Seeing age, disease, and death was the cathartic moment for the Buddha. When he was living a flawless life in his father’s palace, he finally was able to go outside of the palace. Even though his father drove away all old, sick, and dead people, the gods showed him an old man, a sick man, and a corpse. After seeing all of them, especially the corpse, he was disillusioned with his sheltered life. These were the beginnings of his

The Buddha's teachings can be understood on two distinct levels. One is logical and conceptual and is concerned with an intellectual comprehension of man and the external universe. The second level is empirical, experiential and psychological. It concerns the ever-present and inescapable phenomena of human experience -- love and hate, fear and sorrow, pride and passion, frustration and lation. And most important, it explains the origins of such states of mind and prescribes the means for cultivating those states which are rewarding and wholesome and of diminishing those which are unsatisfactory and unwholesome. It was to this second level that the Buddha gave greater emphasis and importance.

At a young age money, politics, and first world problems never occurred to me. However, as I grew older all of these things started to hit me one at a time. From when I started my first job at fifteen, this thing called “taxes” took money out of my check. At that time my mother showed me all of the bills she had to deal with such as, house payments, insurance, and car payments. My entire world was turned around on the subject. This led me to start caring more about America's crises and the responsibilities that come along with adulthood. After bringing my child into this uncertain, harsh world, this subject concerned me beyond belief. It was a cruel smack in the face from reality. Starting with the little things, this is how the 2017 presidential election changed my view on this country, and my view on the world in general.

Jesus’ question “Who do you say that I am” has been one of the most debated questions in Catholicism. Over the past few years of Theology, I have consistently been taught that the Catholic Church believes “Jesus Christ is God the Son, who became man for us.” According to the Church's teachings, we are encouraged to live the way Jesus did, as He is our Lord and Savior. This means we must respect our “enemies”, ourselves, and for that matter all people we encounter in our everyday lives, just like Jesus did. Throughout the Scriptures, we are also reminded of the way Jesus helped people to believe and made them better people with each encounter, even if they didn’t realize it at the time. All of this made Jesus the person that many people view Him as today. So, in agreement with the Catholic Church, I believe that Jesus was the Son of God who saved our lives and saved us from our sins.

It was the start of another day and I was dreading getting out of my mom’s car and walking into my school. I would much rather be at home playing video games than being forced to do mundane work. For the majority of my life, I attended public schools. It wasn’t rare for me to fail a test or even a whole class. It was because of these failures that I would get even more demotivated and threw away the idea of working hard or completing quality work altogether.

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.

After reviewing this assignment, I learned that my approached was going to be a little different from what I was accustomed to doing with other assignments. In previous assignments I referred to a project that my company had completed and had control of from beginning to the end. In that scenario we were in control of and responsible for how far off we were from the schedule/task, cost, and projected finish time. Basically in this assignment the manager was there from the beginning as well; somewhere along the way the project manager’s focus has shifted and we have been given the responsibility to re-evaluate the situation and determine which direction should be taken to get back on track with cost and time. In this scenario the project manager has lost sight of his scope and time schedule.

“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (New International Version, Matt. 6.33-34). If I was told these verses when I was younger, they would contain no special meaning behind them, but after retiring from the military and the trials my family went through to get to where we are today, these verses stand out to me every time I read them. Until we go through our own personal trials we tend to be unaware of how strong our faith and trust needs to be in God. There were moments, when I was younger, where I relied on the Lord, but nothing that could have prepared me for the trust required to give to God during a time where my life completely changed. My family and I were a military family stationed in Hawaii where I lived for most of my life; Hawaii was all I knew. So when my father was ready to retire from his job in the Navy, it meant leaving my “safe zone” that I called home. Living in Hawaii was not an option after retirement for a large family of eight, for it was too expensive to afford. With that said, we went to stay with my grandfather in New York while my father searched for a new job.

I’m a light skin woman living in south Mississippi. I do not personally identify with a race of people. However, my family identifies themselves as Caucasian, I debunk race identification as an arbitrary made-up system employed to categorize people. I believe we are one race, the human race. I more identify with nationality as an American.

When we place our faith in Christ, something happens. We are reborn. God changes us and we become a new creation. The Bible tells us that the old things pass away and new things come. This rebirth is spiritual. The spirit that God breathed into man at creation died when Adam sinned. When we accept Christ and place our faith in Him our spirit is reborn and we become a new creation and the Holy Spirit indwells us. Paul tells us that we are no longer a slave to sin and we are free to obey God.

I remember sitting in my first grade classroom and staring at the whiteboard while Mrs. Amen talked. “What if all this church stuff is a lie fooling the world?” I thought and would continue to for a while afterwards. Growing up, I had always assumed I became a Christian when I was 6 years old but now I’m convinced it wasn’t authentic. Everyone else in my church and school was one so I essentially thought, "Why not?" However, I was never convinced of its authenticity, having never felt the presence of the Holy Spirit or the Father’s perfect love. It was in no way my church’s fault but the Holy Spirit waited to show Himself to me. Until then I would tune out every time God being brought up and only saw the Bible as a resource for world history. However, when I was 12, God brought me to my knees and over the years has thoroughly convinced me logically, emotionally, and practically of His existence moreover the Bible.