Reflection Paper

It was there, I volunteered with the Health Outreach Quality Improvement Program (HOQI). At first, I questioned how an RV bus could serve so many people. After training, I was hooked! My original role as a volunteer transformed and with time I became a Site Leader, overseeing a group of 10 pre- medical students and completing reports of their performance for my 8th avenue clinic in Alachua County. I valued talking with families, most whom came from Central America and were leery about receiving treatment. Because my parents are immigrants from Jamaica, I readily identified with them. I recall my mother often attempted to use natural remedies before visiting a physician, making teas to alleviate ailments. Able to identify with their concerns, I reassured them about the services they were receiving. Later, as a volunteer in a soup kitchen, I was again able to connect with people from diverse backgrounds, especially the homeless population. Preparing meals, I saw that small efforts can have a huge effect on the lives of

I wanted to get a feel for medicine so I decided to volunteer at the Palos Heights Community Hospital. I would see patients every Saturday. Whether they were lethargic or active, I was ready to start a conversation with them. The patients and I would sit in the room and talk about their childhoods and what their goals in life were. I was enthralled learning about each and every one of them and their life experiences. Even Donna Malec, who was the volunteer coordinator, was amazed with my craze of medicine. After this experience, I learned a lot more of what it takes to be a

Eager to learn more about medicine, I began volunteering at a nearby medical center as both a way-finder and clinical volunteer. Through volunteering, I obtained a more in-depth look of medical care in a hospital setting. I was informed about the roles of other healthcare workers. I was able to interact with patients with different backgrounds and learned about their life experiences. I observed how the physicians performed procedures, interacted with patients and other staffs in the hospital through physician shadowing. My clinical experience overall gave me goals to work towards as I realized more of my passion for medicine.

When I was 16 years old I realized I had written a paper about how me and my Nana are different and had forgotten the first paragraph. I do not know how I managed to do that but I need to introduce the ways in which we are different. I like to eat, food is good which means you should a lot of it and often but my Nana is is a big health junkie, she was visiting us and every time we had a meal we would hear why we should not be eating what we are eating and why we should be eating something else. Secondly, stars are in the sky everyone knows that, but how the stars are aligned should not decide how you live your life most people know that, not my Nana she would ask when I was born and then log on to her computer and tell me to watch out because how she believes in ideas that are more out there then what I believe in. Ideas such as, yelling at ice will make it freeze weird or that the Earth is a computer simulation. And now that this part is done I can turn the paper in.

happen the next day and I was constantly worrying about things I had no control over. I never took to time to really appreciate the day. When my dad first introduced me to the song “Tomorrow” by Unspoken, I didn't get the full message. But as I listened to the song more and more I came to realize how significantly this relates to my life. The song taught me how to focus on today, not worry about the future and let God take care of me.

I have always been a believer of second chances, wanting to help people who find themselves in difficult situations within the law. To help people get another opportunity, that I firmly believe everyone deserves. Have we not always been taught to learn from our mistakes, and become better people because of them? I simply cannot accept that a few poor decisions can and should define a person for the rest of their life.

Throughout my time on this course I have been supported in establishing a set of core values and beliefs that will become the foundations of my future practice, which are discussed in my accompanying video. However, for the purpose of this assignment I am going to focus on the beliefs that children need to be taught how to learn and that a talking classroom is a learning classroom. Whilst all my beliefs are important, I am choosing to focus on these values as I believe that gaining and discussing a depth of understanding on these will help me to consider how they will affect the core of my teaching approach and what this will look like within my future classroom. In order to discuss these beliefs I am going to explore the work of Claxton, Vygotsky and mercer in great depth, whilst exploring the beliefs of theorists that have explored their work in order to gain a critical and in depth understanding of how these theories and approaches will support the implementation of my values and beliefs within my future classroom and the implications this will have on students learning. Throughout this assignment I intend to reflect upon how this module has developed my knowledge and understanding of pedagogy in order to highlight aspects that I need to continue to develop within my Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT) year to implement and sustain my core values.

It was during my first year of University when I followed love on a journey that was not my own that I learned a valuable life lesson. A challenge harder than anything I had faced before was waitng on the horizon. I dropped out after getting married to my High School best friend who had enlisted in the United States Army. He gave me an ideal picture of traveling the world with someone who knew me, accepted me and loved me like no one else did. Instead was a person who started controlling me the minute I was away from everything we had known. He was trying to change me, make me think who I was, who I was capable of loving was just a phase since I decided to share the rest of life with him. He started to despise the fact I could love men and women which led to his insecurities fueling his passive abuse towards me. I just hadn’t noticed it yet. He had his façade of a loving protector fooling everyone, even me. Thus, it is that I learned there are experiences we go through in life that have us question whether we are strong enough to beat the struggles and pull through, but when we do, it’s the most gratifying feeling of self-worth, hope, and relief.

The lessons that I develop follow a specific format that includes challenging, measurable objectives, appropriate pacing for each component of the lesson, appropriate student engagement strategies, activities, materials, pre-assigned groupings, and helpful resources. For example, I implement strategies and activities within lessons in order to provide students with an excited experience while learning. Within my well-structured lessons, I ensured that I included rituals and routines that students were familiar with. I also provided students with appropriate responses if students had a misconception about the current topic in order to avoid students feeling of embarrassment or frustration. For instance, during a phonics lesson, a student wrote the word "dat" instead of the word "bat." When seeing the misconception of letter reversals, I made the comment to be sure of the direction of their written letters and to remember that "b has a belly and d wears a diaper." Seeing that this misconception was evident, I provided students with a visual of these letters on the whiteboard. Following all lessons that I teach, I reflect upon my practices and continuously ask my supervising practitioner how the previous lesson went and I state what I feel as though I could improve, as I have the tendency to grasp when I make mistakes or could provide clarification for students. I also reflect on my teaching performance when watching recorded videos and listening to voice recordings of my

Belonging to a minority is such a unique and fascinating gift that should be cherished and embraced incessantly. I was born and raised in the state of Guanajuato in Mexico; I moved to the United States seven years ago because my dad wanted my sisters and me to have a better quality of life and greater probabilities of attending college after high school.

My largest takeaway from CHP 199 is that I need be more critical and nuanced in the way I view myself and the world around me – to step outside of my glass palace of perfection and superiority. I, like many other people from privileged backgrounds, came into this course believing that I was morally superior to incarcerated people. I now realize that to hold such a view is to paint in overly broad brushstrokes and ignore the contextual factors that lead to imprisonment. I have not committed a violent crime before, but I also have not lived in a poverty-stricken area, do not have an abusive parent, and have not dealt with the anger and desperation that stems from systemic racism. Prior to this course, I knew – in an abstract, theoretical way – that incarceration was a problem in the United States. But attending a panel with formerly incarcerated individuals and reading stories about specific people in Just Mercy gave a human face to the problem. Those experiences forced me to grapple with my preconceived notions of the prison population and form a more compassionate, understanding viewpoint.

I accepted Jesus Christ as my savior when I was 20 years old. At that time I was struggling with my family, problems in school and toxic relationship with my boyfriend. Despite believing in God I still did not have the knowledge of his word and the spiritual skills to find the wisdom and spiritual resources. In the midst of all those difficult circumstances a miracle happened: the Savior chose me, one of my aunts invited me to a Bible study group where I was captivated by the love, forgiveness and guidance that the word of God and His Holy Spirit was giving me in that moment the peace which surpasses all understanding, so from that day I made the decision and went to my aunt's church, to a retreat and then baptized accepting Jesus as my savior.

Perspectives of how we view the world around us at many points of life can become so obscured that they often become lost and forgotten leading one to live a life with a single perspective--a single story. You see it was a day like any other in the chaotic mess that is the center for the community during dinner hours where hundreds upon hundreds if not thousands of students converge in a swarm echoing clattering noise of conversations, and endless queues wrapping around every little space to eat what most consider to be subpar food. I was sitting alone merely being that weird guy who preferred to read. All the while, I noticed some students horsing around, and in my attention, I saw a full cup of soda which was obviously at some point going to get spilled.

I believe I live up to the qualification of loyalty to the Jesuit ideals of higher education through my active participation in many of the classes, clubs, and jobs here on campus, as well as my continuous effort to participate in all the events the college has to offer. I believe that since many of the classes, clubs, and events are founded at the college, they are already rooted in the Jesuit ideals and values and thus, my active participation in them throughout my college career so far has allowed me to unconsciously live up to these standards.

I attended preschool at Enon Elementary when I was four years old. I went there for about a week before Hurricane Katrina hit Washington Parish, and my family had to evacuate. We went to our Great-Aunt Caroline’s house in Pineville and I attended one of the schools there. At that time my mother was pregnant and my father was in Iraq. By the time we got back home my mother went into labor with my little brother Dillon and my dad was on a plane headed to New Orleans. On September fourth my little brother was born and my father came home from Iraq just in time to witness it.