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.

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.

Human trafficking is the modern day equivalent of slavery and must be recognized as such by the society if this transnational crime has to be knocked out. We all know what labor trafficking is “its everywhere but still nowhere”. Labor trafficking or forced labor, describes the practice of using fear, coercion or deceit to force an individual to work in return for a bare level of survival, allowing the perpetrator to profit from the situation. It’s shocking that we are still unaware of the fact that it has become one of the worlds third largest criminal industries bringing annual revenue of almost 32 billion dollars. This industry takes advantage of innocent people through slavery, organ trade, sexual exploitation and forced labor, but nothing drives the passion and stirs the emotion, especially in the United States, more than the horrendous stories of modern-day human slavery. Whether sexual, domestic, or labor, the terror and horror that human trafficking victims have endured defies the scope of our sensitivities. Most who work in human service fields have heard many stories of these survivors. We have heard of the dedication of the practitioners and law enforcement officers who are involved in the apprehending, and prosecution of offenders, and advocate for victims in these very complex cases. To realize that this may be happening in our own towns and neighborhoods, invisible to us as we go about our daily comfortable lives.

“Writing an essay is not difficult! I am actually great at it.” This is a common statement that I would formally say, and even believe. In the past, I had never felt the need to thoroughly revise my essays before. In all my past essays, I would work intensely on my first draft and then just turn the essay in. I never spent too much time re-evaluating my writing decisions before turning it in. This process had worked well for myself in the past, and as a result, each essay I turned it would be an easy “A”. When I signed up for EN100 I figured that it would be just like the other easy English class that I have taken. I assumed that I would work on an essay, turn it in, and then earn an A on it, but this was not the case. When I signed up for EN100 I figured that I could continue my previous essay writing methods, but that was quickly disproven. When I received my first graded essay, I was unsure why I earned anything but an “A” on it. It soon became clear to me that I was going to be required to change the way I formerly wrote my essays and spend more time with correcting them.

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.

Throughout the years I have had several life-changing events, but the one that affected me the most was going up to boundary waters in Minnesota. We went into the wilderness for 5 days with no electronics and limited food. We would have to quickly paddle in our canoes against the strong winds and then slowly and carefully carry our heavy backpacks around in order to get to our next campsite. We had to endeavor all the pain that was brought to us.

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.

As we now know I’m currently earning ~$44,500, and in preparation for my review I did a little homework. According to my research, with my skills and knowledge, I should be earning more. I would like to discuss an increase in my compensation to reflect the effort I’ve put into this team and this company.

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.

Pencils rolled and minds drifted. Time seemed to pass at least twice as slow as usual when a usually energetic and lively class of fourth graders was brought to steady silence while their teacher droned on about kinetic energy later passing out a reading and worksheet. In the end worksheets ended up half finished and students left the class full of confusion and disinterest. In a later lesson, the class was transformed. The classroom was littered with poster paper, markers, and ideas. The students were finishing up posters explaining kinetic energy based on an experiment done earlier in the unit using a marble and toy car track. The room was filled with a steady stream of chatter that only diminished once the students sat down to watch a video on the effects of kinetic energy on two very different cars: a toy car and an actual car. After observing these two very different lessons and comparing them to others I noticed a distinct pattern. When learning through experiments, projects, and videos the students were not only more engaged, but they appeared to have learned more that they had in the previous lesson. A question was quickly raised on what we should do as teachers if students do not respond well to our lesson plans.

I grew up in a strong Christian family, who are loving and supportive and constantly point me towards God, reminding me that he is in control. my family has always been very involved in the church, growing up we went to church every Sunday and Wednesday. as a little girl, my favorite part of the week was going to church, to hear the bible stories and to see all my wonderful friends. I always thought I had a good relationship with God, but soon I realized that it was not genuine. I knew who God was and I believed in him but I never had a genuine relationship with him. I was only a young girl I did not fully understand the concept of giving my life to Christ. As I grew up, I started to realize more and more what it meant to follow Christ. When I was twelve years old, is when I realized how important it is to have a relationship with God and I wanted my own faith, instead of living vicariously through my parents faith.

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.

Interpretation of Literature has given me an excellent opportunity to not only work on my analysis of novels, but improve my adroitness in creating an argumentative and interpretative paper and thesis. I developed a different mindset on how to go about starting and finishing a strong paper after dissecting each novel we read every class period. By taking a look at each one individually and picking out main points, I started to take notes on what we talked about for ideas on future papers. It took me a while to get ahold of everything, and I don’t think I’m anywhere near perfect yet, but with determination I have gradually learned the basics to the different parts of each interpretive paper. I’d say my weakest points that have slowly grown stronger are my abilities to write a thesis, and give good supporting evidence and statements to back it up.

The Jesus and Christian Community class at Fresno Pacific University is a course where a student can further develop their relationship and understanding of the Bible while discovering a relationship with Christ. All incoming freshmen are required to take this course as a part of their general education requirements which focuses on the book of Matthew, his interpretation, and the historical background of the Bible. One of our assignments is to help incoming pupils understand a certain verse and its purpose. The section we will be focusing on is the in Matthew chapter 17 verses 14 through 21 in addition to the Sadducees and other related topics. Jesus has followers which are the general public and disciples who are the people who claim to be devoted to God called the Pharisees and Sadducees. The faction of the disciples called the Sadducees are a group that are not characteristically what one would depict as humble servant of Christ. They followed their own set of rules and had standards that were different from the Pharisees, the followers of Christ, and Jesus himself. As we continue this discussion, we will see the importance of the verse in Matthew along with the roles the Sadducees and the things that influenced their cultural views.