Reflection Paper

As I was first raised as a child, the biggest influential individual in my life is my mother. Nonetheless, she comes from a background from how her parents raised her to treat others in the same manner as you would like to be treated. With this standard, this has been the “golden rule” throughout our family today. By belonging to a Catholic Church since I moved back to the state of Pennsylvania before entering the start of 2nd grade, I attended St.Ignatius of Antioch in Yardley, Pennsylvania.

In Elizabeth’s classroom there are various activities going on all about Egypt, there are students demonstrating how ancient kings were mummified for burial. The students are learning about Ancient Egypt, but they are doing it in an atypical way. The activities and lessons are not teacher driven, instead the students are working in collaborative groups except one student and they are working on student driven projects. Some students are learning about pyramids. The classroom brings on a new meaning to organized chaos. A teacher who really needs structure in the classroom may have a difficult time with a classroom that is organized like Elizabeth’s. There are a few areas of concern when approaching student driven activities like what is being done in Elizabeth’s classroom. One concern is how can she ensure that all her students are learning the required content. To me this can be done a couple of ways. She could use formative assessments throughout the learning process as a way to assess if the students are learning the content. These can be as simple as observations of the students collaborating together, or as concrete as a pen/paper quiz over the required content. Another way is to establish content specific rubrics that are differentiated to meet the needs of each group’s specific projects. Of course the rubrics need to be presented and reviewed with the students several times throughout the process. Prior to beginning their assignments and then revisited in weekly

Stubborn is how my Mom would describe my personality. My Dad, on the other hand, always said I was tenacious. He believed our greatest strength can be found by understanding our weaknesses. As a child, he explained that being stubborn is a negative attribute. According to him, people do not like when they meet an inflexible brick wall. Tenacity, on the other hand, can be a powerful tool. It shows people you are determined and persistent. He wanted me to understand that a strength can sometimes be a weakness made to work in our favor. I have always remembered this advice and have used tenacity to achieve many of my life goals.

Since I took U.S history and AP Government in high school, I was not completely blind to issues regarding the government prior to taking this course. I knew how the government worked in terms of the separations of powers, the bureaucracy, civil liberties and civil rights, and the different branches of it. Therefore, I did understand the function and the purpose of the government, however, I did not understand them all too well to believe that my trust in the government was high. I see the bad in the good, and the good in the bad, therefore, I was skeptical of the government when it came to certain issues. Furthermore, I like to see all sides of an issue before I take a sand on it, this causes me to be confused as to where I stand in regards to my political thoughts and attitudes. Overall, however, I consider myself to be very liberal when it comes to politics and policy making, especially in regard to women’s rights, immigration, education, global warming and the environment, as well as health care. However, I am still confused of where I stand on certain issues, especially regarding issues such as affirmative action. In essence, I am still figuring out what my political thoughts and attitudes are, but the beliefs I currently have are highly due to my political socialization and hopefully with the information I learned in this course I can continue to better understand certain issues and how I identify with them.

The United States has always been known as a melting pot; a country where different ethnicities, cultures, and religions could congregate to in order to escape from conformity. A country where people could go in order to start a family and raise their children in a diverse environment. A place where everyone from different backgrounds is represented and everybody can share their ideals and experiences and feel welcomed. That is what I was told growing up, that is what teachers and mentors engraved into my brain, and it wasn’t until I was seventeen-years-old when I realized that is far from the truth. My language and perspectives are constricted due to the fact I grew up in the United States, and all it took was one trip overseas for me to discover the diversity of the world in comparison to America.

I don’t think women are truly appreciated for the fierce warriors that they are. I think the downside to my gender is the “period”. I have been plagued with that since I was nine and I can tell you I’m not going to miss it when it’s gone. One experience that I remember particularly growing up was at my high school. A male teacher suggested that math wasn’t for girls and I should go take a economics class and learn to sex something. He didn’t like my response and I was kicked out of class and happy to be away from a narrow-minded misogynistic man. I think one thing that this experience has taught me is that basic respect for people should be given to all equally not just one group.

From the first day I could walk my mom started to develop my athletic abilities and attitude. She would play catch with me, kick around a soccer ball, and teach me how to dribble, all at home in her free time. I was exposed to sports quite often because her, my dad, and their friends, played coed volleyball and softball. I additionally have multiple older cousins who she would take me to watch play in high school games. Here I saw not only how the games were played; as well as what a team player and how the correct attitude appears out there on the floor. As soon as I was old enough, she signed me up for recreational sports in a neighboring town. Most of the time those teams end up with coaches who don’t know what they’re doing and my mom was not okay with that. She decided to take it in to her own initiative and coach my team that way she knew I would actually be learning the sports the correct way and making improvements. She coached me in flag football, soccer, basketball, volleyball, and softball. Quite often one of my friend’s parents would help her coach. My mom led some severely successful teams in my childhood. Especially in softball where we won multiple trophies. Sometimes I would become frustrated because it seemed as if she expected more out of me than the other players and I was always getting yelled at; although, now looking back I’m thankful for all the yelling and correcting me that she did because it pushed me to be a better player.

A week before college move-in day, I had to leave behind my strenuous summer job with a heavy heart, wondering if I would ever see my kids ever again. If you have ever worked with young children, you know how exceptionally hard it is to be the perfect balance of fun and energetic, yet responsible and poised. Even though I was a camp counselor for three years, each summer felt like the first. This past summer was just as exhausting as any other year, but it was more momentous in more ways than one. Going into the summer, I knew that it would be my last- seeing that I was moving to Charlotte and I would never see that same group of kids ever again. In May, before it was 95 degrees consistently, I made a promise to myself to appreciate the experience because I would never get another summer like it.

“We wish you all a productive course.” A simple, dry line uttered by the teacher as I headed in for what I knew would be a grueling experience. A meditation retreat conducted entirely in “noble silence” and dedicated to finally understanding what enlightenment is. Noble silence, they called it, was the act of working as if we were alone in complete silence; alone I was in a secluded place, two hours north of Chicago amongst miles of flat cornfields where the roar of speeding cars overshadows the squawks of Canadian geese flying overhead. The place was the Illinois Vipassanā Meditation Center and it is where I chose to make my final attempt at achieving spiritual enlightenment. This silence was said to help get previous students to the goal of enlightenment. It was a goal that, at the time, I could barely define and had little clue to the gravity of what I was about to embark on. In the end, I would witness one of the noble truths of all existence: Impermanence is inherent in all physical and mental phenomena; all that arises in the Universe will surely pass away.

Michael Jordan said talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships. This mentality is precisely the case with the compensation project. Individually, everyone could have finished the project however by working with others the project became more polished and finished quicker. In class, discussions with my group allowed me to gain exceptional insight on topics which previously I would have overlooked. Teamwork forced me to open up and look inwards to find how I was limiting the team and way to improve myself.

“Because transition is a process by which people unplug into a new world, we can say that transition starts with an ending and finishes with a beginning.” In many ways the previous quote relations to my transition of transferring from Saint Peter’s University to UNC Charlotte. I had to “unplug” from many things in both my academic and personal life, as a result of, transferring to another school.

History allows people to look back on the mistakes and victories of people in past times. Throughout studying the first half of western civilizations, it is easy to extract several key learning principles for the Christian life. All of these principles have to do with the way a Christian should live their life. From the readings and discussions, I was reminded of how we should live our lives by viewing all people as God would view them, with radical faith, intention, humility, and commitment. Christian community is vital for carrying each other’s burdens.

On my last day with class 3-213, I had the opportunity to conduct an interdisciplinary lesson using nonfiction articles. The articles I used derived from Nonfiction News: African Animal Edition by Cecelia Margo. Accordingly, the students have been studying nonfiction for several weeks and because of this, they had previously learned the various features of this genre. Upon planning for this lesson, I took time to prepare and craft an activity that would promote collaboration and engagement. Thoughtfully, I took into consideration the children that were in the room and adapted my lesson to meet their educational needs. Thus, I decided that I was going to crafted this lesson on the premises of two ideas: (1) tiered-text differentiation and (2) the pairing of advanced and struggling learners. Going into this lesson, I knew that I wanted to ask thoughtful and encouraging questions that would enable students to integrate their prior knowledge and challenge them.

During my first year of highschool, I was held to a higher standard, than my previous years at middle school. A lot of the teachers at my school were preparing us for a college level experience. One teacher, especially, was pretty hard on us and she was the English teacher. The first major paper that was assigned was a research paper that had to discuss a historical event and how that event impacted the world. Since this was my first major paper and I was used to this kind of writing, I ended up writing specifically about Alexander the Great and the wars that he fought in. I specifically detailed the battles and what was going on, but I did not talk about how it impacted the world. My teacher offered to proof read the papers two days before the deadline so we could fix any critical errors. I showed her my paper and she said that if I turned that paper in, I would receive an F on the paper. I always strive to get good grades and to pass with all A’s, so when my teacher said this, I immediately realized how important writing could be and I started to develop my writing skills. All of the factors that were in this situation, made it a rhetorical situation.

A fundamental lesson that stuck with me through my early years of childhood was the importance of loving to write. There are many instances that have influenced me as a writer today, including going through an immense amount of stress from AP classes, writing my own poetry, taking the 5th grade writing exam, and applying to colleges. I developed a love hate relationship with reading and writing and this was strongly influenced by my teachers, parents and tutors throughout the years.